Investment funds are an established but continuously growing industry in Guernsey because of the attractiveness of the territory as an offshore jurisdiction and its tax regime. Ozannes specialise in the establishment of private equity funds, fund of funds, property/real estate funds and emerging market funds, and have seen an influx of activity over the past few months.
Additionally, the firm has worked on establishing numerous protected cell companies, used especially in relation to different investment objectives and strategies of the same fund, and the need to ring-fence the assets of one cell with a certain investment objective against the claims of another cell with different objectives.
Ozannes are also seeing the growing use of limited partnerships for small to medium-sized funds that may not necessarily be qualified as private equity structures. This is primarily because of the flexibility of limited partnerships and their tax transparency.
Elsewhere, there is growing interest in establishing funds in Guernsey from overseas. For example, US managers are very active within the permanent capital trends. The Corporate team are also seeing an increasing number of funds being established to acquire assets situated in India, Russia and the Balkan states.
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