Author Archives: Malle Pietje

UG: User Group meeting – 21 July 2014

ANNOUNCEMENT

We will be organizing the 3rd annual user group meeting for IR Alternative at the offices of ZFM in Wateringen, the Netherlands on 21 July 2014.

The last meetings have been greatly appreciated by participants and speakers alike. As with the previous meetings the primary purposes of this meeting is to discuss your needs, how IR Alternative can even better suit your needs and we will share with you some of the new and exciting technology we are looking to roll out together with you.

WateringenOffices

If you have not received a personalized invitation to the meeting directly, then please contact your account managers and they will assist you with the registration process.

Also, for clients travelling to our offices from abroad, please do not hesitate to contact organisers of the meeting at user.group@IRalternative.com should you require any assistance with travel / hotel arrangements.

AIFMD: Hedge funds still slow to comply

Hedge fund managers accross EU are are slow to comply with AIFMD (“Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive”) ahead of a significant regulatory deadline this summer, even after it was pushed back by six months to accommodate them.

By June 22, all alternative funds marketed in Europe should comply with the AIFMD, but surveys show that fewer than a fifth of EU funds have filed the relevant documents with regulators.

The directive requires all alternative funds marketed in Europe to meet stringent levels of disclosure and governance, in many cases requiring companies to introduce or increase their risk-management function, as well as making their marketing and {investor} communications much more detailed.

We have been involved in reviewing marketing and investor communications for several of our clients already. Should you be interested to have a further discussion or require further information, please contact your account managers and they will be available to assist you further.

IR: Investors Seek More Transparency

There is a fundamental shift underway in what information the investor community desires from their fund managers.

Nearly 89% of investors who responded to an Opalesque and Intralinks survey said they won’t invest in new funds due to transparency concerns. Additionally, the survey shows that only half of investors who responded think they are getting enough transparency from their current managers. The survey points out that during the past ten years, not much has changed in the way fund managers communicate with investors.

The survey clearly highlights that a good investor communication program can be a significant  competitive advantage for fund managers.

One of the main expectations that investors have regarding their fund managers relates to the provision of data in electronic format to facilitate in-house processing and analysis. Here fund managers can benefit from the facilities in IR Alternative to distribute reports and data files eiter by e-mail or via our cloud based secure online portal (also available for set-up in private cloud environment).

EU: ECJ ruling on reclaim Polish withholding tax

On 10 April 2014 the ECJ (“EU Court of Justice”) ruled that US regulated investment companies (“RICs”) cannot be excluded from the benefits of the Polish withholding tax exemption that is benefiting domestic funds, if Poland has sufficient means to verify that they are comparable to such domestic funds.

For the full decision please refer to:
Emerging Markets Series of DFA Investment Trust (C-190/12) 10th of April, 2014

This is an interesting decision and will also impact other EU member states like France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain.

Should you be interested to have a further discussion or require further information, please contact your account managers and they will be available to assist you further.

IR: Version 2.0 – Beta available for testing

The new version 2.0 of IR Alternative is now available for beta testing by clients.

Main changes and updates:

  • Increased color and logo customization so that reporting can be customized on multiple levels (fund level, fund class / series level). This will allow you to increase brand recognition for individual strategies within your fund structure.
  • Updated user interface to allow quicker access to the functions and reports.
  • Application is now fully aware where it is located and sets links, paths, etc. automatically for your installation. This significantly reduces the time and work required on user side to install and update the application.
  • All screens now have ‘Help’ buttons that bring users directly to the corresponding page in our online Knowledge base. User no longer need to navigate through the Knowledge base to locate answers but can used the quickest way to finding an answer to their question.
  • Expended number of monitoring reports that should benefit internal control, compliance and ISAE 3402 / SSAE 16 requirements.

If you are a client of ZFM and use IR Alternative and are currently not in our Beta team, then please contact one of your account managers and they will be able to set you up for participation.