Types of Investment Funds in Italy

Updated on Monday 05th September 2016

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Italy, a member state of the European Union (EU), provides many investment schemes, addressed to various types of investors. The investment funds in Italy are regulated by different laws, set up for retail funds and hedge funds. As a part of the EU, the Italian legislations for fund domiciliation incorporated the provisions established by the Community’s main bodies. An important aspect referring to Italy is that, for the period 2014-2020, the local authorities allocated EUR 42,77 billion for European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF). Foreign investors who want to open an investment fund in Italy can receive legal assistance from our team of Italian lawyers.

Retail funds in Italy

Italian retail funds can be set up following the regulations imposed by the Bank of Italy and CONSOB (The Italian Securities and Exchange Commission). Retail funds can be registered as open-ended funds or closed-ended funds. An open-ended fund does not impose any type of restrictions referring to the level of shares that can be issued through the fund, while the closed-ended fund can only issue a limited amount of shares. However, such funds fall under the same regulatory framework, which is given by several Acts.

An important regulation in this sense is the Bank of Italy Act on the Regulation on collective asset management.

Open-ended funds can be set up as:

• undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS);

• open-ended alternative investment funds.

The closed-ended funds are regulated as alternative investment funds (AIF) under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFM) and an example in this sense are the real estate investment funds; our team of Italian attorneys can offer more details on the AIFM legislation.

It is important to know that, in February 2016, the Italian government enacted a new regulation for the AIFs (Law Decree 18/2016), which establishes that EU domiciled AIFs can lend money to Italian borrowers, but only in certain conditions. At the same time, such funds have to follow the transparency legislation available for financial institutions, such as banks.

Italian hedge funds

The main purpose of a hedge fund is to establish a market strategy that will provide a high level of return in both domestic and international economies. They can use different investment strategies, following the applicable legislation for reserved AIF and they are also regulated by the above mentioned institutions.

Businessmen interested in receiving further details on the investment funds in Italy can address to our Italian law firm for legal representation.