Voss, who was elected the president of the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI) last week, said asset managers from places as far afield as China, Brazil and Chile were coming to Luxembourg to set up UCITS funds for distribution back into their own countries.
They were also looking to tap into the global distribution networks available from Luxembourg, Voss said in an interview with International Adviser.
“Luxembourg UCITS are distributed in over 70 countries. Chinese asset managers and the like see that as an opportunity to distribute globally their skill in their own countries,” Voss said.
Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, or UCITS, are a set of European Union Directives that allow investment funds to operate freely throughout the EU on the basis of a single authorisation from one member state.
"It’s not why Luxembourg, it’s why not Luxembourg?”
According to data from the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) net sales of UCITS schemes in the first quarter of 2015 were €285bn (£203trn, $182trn) compared with just €49bn in the last quarter of 2014.
Overall net assets of UCITS funds were up 15.4% to €8.2trn at the end of March 2015, the EFAMA data showed.
“We see Luxembourg as the international global fund centre. It’s not why Luxembourg, it’s why not Luxembourg?” Voss said.
China arrives
Voss noted that six of the largest Chinese banks now have their European headquarters in the Grand Duchy, which is one of the smallest countries in the world, and one of these banks is the eurozone clearing bank for renminbi.
A handful of Luxembourg funds have also been approved to use Stock Connect, a program which provides mutual trading access between the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets, enabling a UCITS fund to invest directly in A-shares listed on the Shanghai stock exchange.
