The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has announced that they are moving forward to assess further groups of non-EU countries, such as Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man and Mauritius in regards to the extension of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) Passport to non-EU AIFMs and AIFs following last week's announcement regarding Jersey and Guernsey.
This is good news for alternative investment fund managers that do business in Europe, as the expected effect would be to extend the passporting regime to non-EU AIFMS and AIFs which regime is currently only available to EU based alternative investment fund managers. All of the jurisdictions mentioned above are working to develop enhancements to their respective regimes that will allow the AIFMD Passport to be extended to them. In the meantime, funds in those jurisdictions continue to be able to be marked into Europe through the existing private placement regimes in the EU member states.
This advice will now be sent to the European Parliament, Commission and Council for those bodies to determine whether the operative provisions in the AIFMD should be activated. It should be noted that ESMA has recommended to those European institutions that they may wish to consider waiting until ESMA has made positive recommendations in relation to a sufficient number of non-EU countries in order to avoid adverse impacts to the market.
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