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Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
Publication | August 2015
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has provided an overview of the Australian hedge funds sector and included in its report the results of ASIC’s 2014 hedge funds survey, which covers the 12 months to 30 September 2014. The survey was conducted partly in response to the request made by IOSCO of its members to survey their large hedge fund managers, and reflects continuing regulator interest in the sector. ASIC's 2014 hedge fund survey collected data from 18 Australian based managers (each with more than $571 million in hedge fund assets under management) and referenced 27 hedge funds which had assets under management of $37.1 billion (two of these funds were based outside of Australia).
The survey also includes separate findings from a review into the hedge funds sector based on aggregated data collected by ASIC from commercial providers.
The following sets out some key conclusions drawn from the 2014 hedge funds survey (including a comparison with the 2012 results) as described in the report:
In conducting the surveys between 2012 and 2014, ASIC reduced the number of survey data points (mainly to assist the surveyed hedge funds in providing the relevant information in an efficient manner). Among others, these changes included adopting a broader definition of a ‘hedge fund’, in line with the definition used by IOSCO—that is, a fund that presents a combination of some of the following characteristics: (i) use of leverage, (ii) performance fees based on unrealised gains, (iii) complex strategies, which may include use of derivatives, short selling, high-frequency trading and/or the search for absolute returns, and (iv) a tendency to invest in financial rather than physical assets.
The aggregated data collected from these managers was submitted to IOSCO’s global hedge fund survey project.While the survey fits into a bigger international initiative, data collected by ASIC from the survey will inform its approach to the sector, possibly including any changes to ASIC’s mandated hedge fund disclosure principles.
Fixed income derivatives were classed as their own asset type in ASIC’s 2014 hedge funds survey. In 2012, fixed income derivatives were included in the underlying fixed income asset classes.
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Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
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