QFII, R-QFII and Luxembourg Funds – Newsflash – 01.04.2014

As widely reported in November 2013 , the first Luxembourg R-QFII UCITS allowing for a 100% China A-Shares strategy has been approved by the Luxembourg Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (the “CSSF”). This announcement was expected and highly anticipated by the industry in both Hong Kong and Luxembourg. It gave a strong message that Luxembourg, as traditional fund centre and rising Renminbi (“RMB”) financial centre , is determined to keep its first mover advantage regarding People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) strategies and is willing to encourage Asian, US and European asset managers to use the Luxembourg UCITS brand to market their PRC strategies in the EU and abroad. As the PRC economy matures and the PRC government is opening up its capital markets, managers have seen an increasing number of opportunities and clear interest of investors in portfolios providing them exposure to China A-Shares, RMB fixed-income securities, financial indices or derivatives on those instruments. Connecting those PRC strategies to their clients in the EU, Latin America, the Middle-East or Asia has been in the center of discussions with many asset managers willing to make the two main access channels to the PRC capital markets, namely QFII and R-QFII, fit a Luxembourg UCITS, a Part II fund or a SIF . The recent regulatory developments of those two schemes in the PRC have brought them towards a greater compatibility with UCITS rules and made possible the approval of new products such as the R-QFII UCITS referred to above. “How making use of QFII and R-QFII quotas in Luxembourg structures? What are the main issues to have in mind when considering such a project? And what will be next?” are questions which we would like to touch on in this note, which aims at being more practical than legal.