IMA responses to Asset Management Green Paper

16 November 2005

The Investment Management Association (IMA) published its response to the Commission’s consultation “Green paper on the enhancement of the EU framework for investment funds” and strongly supports the Commission in its push to increase the competitiveness and efficiency of the European funds industry by opening up the single European market. With regard to simplifying the notification procedure IMA welcomes the consultation document by the Committee of European Securities Regulators but is concerned that the document is too limited. IMA, therefore, calls on the Commission to intervene to achieve more radical change if the regulators prove unable to do so.

IMA also calls on the Commission to make the enabling of fund mergers a priority as well as fund pooling as a complement to fund mergers.

IMA finally urges the Commission not to seek to introduce product regulation for such non-UCITS funds at EU level, but rather to focus on the distribution of such funds. It calls on the Commission to align the private placement rules, allowing non-UCITS funds to be marketed cross-border to appropriate investors, particularly institutions, without having to incur the costs of complying with a range of different rules in different countries.

The Green Paper reflects IMA’s own priorities which were submitted to the Commission in the 2003 Heinemann report which emphasised the importance of a genuine European single market in asset management and estimated that it would bring economic benefits to the industry of at least ԅ billion a year and could produce an increase in the overall size of a pension by about 9%, or ��,000 for the average investor.

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© Investment Management Association (IMA)