ITALY: Bank of Italy publishes Italian Mutual Fund Industry Report

Thursday July 24 2008

The Bank of Italy has today published its Report of the Working Group on Italian Mutual Funds (the ‘Report’). The Report proposes to improve the hedge fund and funds of hedge fund industry by:

* Lowering the minimum investment levels for hedge funds and funds of hedge funds,

* Abolishing the requirement to have a maximum number of participants in a fund,

* Creating separate regulation for funds of hedge funds, and

* Increasing transparency of intermediary distributors allowing more information to be available to subscribers.

The Report is in response to a perceived ‘crisis’ in the Italian funds industry. The Report recognises the following factors as primary reasons for current shortcomings within the Italian mutual funds industry; the asymmetries in regulated mutual funds on transparency compared to other financial products, critical elements of network distributions, and tax disadvantages.

The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) also welcomes these proposals, many of which echo the findings of AIMA’s 2006 survey of the Italian hedge fund market.

For a copy of the Bank of Italy’s Report (in Italian) please click on the above link.

For more information please click on the link below :

* AIMA welcomes Italian mutual fund industry report -http://www.aima.org/uploads/AIMAWelcomesItalianHedgeFundIndustryReport.pdf

*AIMA Publishes Results of its Survey of the Italian Hedge Fund Market –

http://www.aima.org/uploads/AIMAItalySurveyJune06ENGLISH.pdf