The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has published a consultation paper proposing new rules for establishing fund platforms to allow fund managers to work with multiple funds at the same time.
Fund managers would be allowed to use the platform in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) to manage different stand-alone funds, which is not covered by the current regime.
Currently, in the DIFC there is no centralised dedicated infrastructure that allows managing multiple funds. Instead, fund managers are only allowed to operate “umbrella funds” which have multiple sub-funds.
However, the consultation paper suggests that only local fund managers should be allowed to use the platforms in the Dubai financial centre. Under the proposal, external fund managers would not be allowed to establish fund platforms and that external funds should not be hosted in the DIFC.
This comes as a result of proposing that the new fund platforms would be established as a company which is directly linked to a company operating in the DIFC.
The implementation of the fund platforms would require the creation of a different type of investment company called “Incorporated Cell Company”, with its ‘incorporated cells’ acting as separate legal entities, the DFSA said in its consultation paper.
The creation of these type of companies would make it easier to centralise fund management and make operating in the fund platforms more accessible to managers.
The DFSA will be accepting feedback on the proposal until 18 January 2019.
