The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive ("AIFMD"), adopted by the European Union on 11 November 2010, has introduced a harmonized set of rules for alternative investment funds (“AIFs”) in Europe. This thesis discusses potential financial risks for the AIFs industry arising from the European regulatory reform, which started before the current financial crisis, and compares relevant European, Canadian and US rules governing AIFs. This comparative analysis is based on four main criteria: i) registration and authorization requirements, ii) general financial transparency requirements, iii) capital requirements, and iv) remuneration restrictions. The analysis of AIFs regulatory reform in Europe leads to three main conclusions. First, the AIFMD requirements are much stricter than analogue regimes in Canada and the United States. Second, as a consequence of this regulation, European AIFs may be in disadvantage. Third, the complexity of the present European institutional framework is not able to fully implement the European regulatory reform.

The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive ("AIFMD"), adopted by the European Union on 11 November 2010, has introduced a harmonized set of rules for alternative investment funds (“AIFs”) in Europe. This thesis discusses potential financial risks for the AIFs industry arising from the European regulatory reform, which started before the current financial crisis, and compares relevant European, Canadian and US rules governing AIFs. This comparative analysis is based on four main criteria: i) registration and authorization requirements, ii) general financial transparency requirements, iii) capital requirements, and iv) remuneration restrictions. The analysis of AIFs regulatory reform in Europe leads to three main conclusions. First, the AIFMD requirements are much stricter than analogue regimes in Canada and the United States. Second, as a consequence of this regulation, European AIFs may be in disadvantage. Third, the complexity of the present European institutional framework is not able to fully implement the European regulatory reform.

74 ABSTRACT This thesis deals with the private equity industry. Its aim is to coherently introduce private equity as a distinctive and integral part of today's economy, to provide relevant insight on the principles of functioning of private equity business model, and to analyse the mechanism of the most commonly used private equity transaction type. The thesis is structured into three chapters with each chapter being dedicated to one of the sub-aims. First chapter defines the notion of private equity and discusses the history of the industry and its economic performance. Private equity encompasses all types of equity investments into non-publicly traded companies. The industry itself has been gaining on significance since its emersion in the 1980s, mainly due to the fact that private equity investments have been consistently outperforming public markets in terms of realized returns. Second chapter is dedicated to the business model of private equity funds, their structure and lifecycle, as well as the investment process itself. Private equity funds take on the limited partnership legal form, which is managed by a professional private equity house while the investors' involvement consists solely in the provision of capital. A fund's lifetime is usually limited by a period of ten years and its lifecycle is...

LEGAL REGULATION OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT FUNDS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC ABSTRACT The purpose of my thesis is to analyze the impact of the recently adopted groundbreaking European regulation of alternative investment funds into the Czech legal environment of collective investments. The respective chapters provide an analysis of the most important aspects of regulation of alternative investment funds, which I consider as crucial for collective investment undertakings and its (even only potential) investors. In a large portion of the thesis I focus on the definition of alternative investment funds to clarify the possible modes of operation and distinguish them from their earlier regulated standard counterparts. In the first of eight chapters I introduce this topic in the historical context, which provides a brief excursion into the progress of regulation of collective investment at the European and Czech level, and further explain the reasons which led to creation of a unified regulation for collective investment business. The second chapter describes the current regulatory framework in accordance with the European regulation, based primarily on the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and its subsequent transposition into the Czech Act on Investment Companies and Investment Funds (ICIFA)....

The aim of the thesis is to analyse the non-bank regulatory framework with particular attention devoted to hedge funds and private equity funds. The thesis describes functioning of the funds, discusses their performance during the global financial crisis of 2007-present and, predominantly, describes and analyses the EU and U.S. regulatory reforms with respect to these institutions which have arisen as a response to the crisis. Based on the analysis of the measures incorporated in these reforms, the thesis outlines its own proposal of an alternative investment fund regulatory framework which, if applied, would lead to a more efficient functioning of the alternative investment industry than what is likely to be the outcome of the already adopted reforms. The nature of the thesis is institutional; its methodology is characterized by a broad literature survey. Hedge funds and private equity funds are considered both in pre-crisis context as well as in circumstances that have been brought about by the crisis. Several hypotheses concerning systemic risk and the approach of the regulatory reforms to it are assessed. Mostly qualitative analysis is employed to evaluate the hypotheses.

This thesis explores the idea that time frame is an important determinant of commodity trading advisor (CTA) performance. Results allow us to reject the hypothesis that short-term price movements may be due only to noise, thus CTAs will have the same performance regardless of time frame. Using several performance measures and multi-factor models we find instead that CTAs who focus on short-term price changes are better positioned to benefit from advances in financial information processing and trade execution technology.

The cryptocurrency market is continuously growing but is still a relatively unexplored field within academic research. The ambition with this thesis is to increase existing research on market efficiency of cryptocurrencies, by studying the risk exposure of identical investments between different cryptocurrency exchanges. The study includes four cryptocurrencies and nine different exchanges, the data is tested on a full sample period and two subsample periods. The results reveal significant Sharpe ratio differences for identical investments on selected exchanges, but also improved efficiency between the first and second subsample periods. The study concludes that there are significant market inefficiencies on the cryptocurrency market, but the results also suggests that the market is becoming more efficient over time.

Submitted by Romain Martignier (rmartignier@gmail.com) on 2015-09-27T19:41:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Master Thesis Romain Martignier .pdf: 1548641 bytes, checksum: 62bdf53acc0159976d2f937eb2a5e4b4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luana Rodrigues (luana.rodrigues@fgv.br) on 2015-09-28T09:59:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Master Thesis Romain Martignier .pdf: 1548641 bytes, checksum: 62bdf53acc0159976d2f937eb2a5e4b4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-28T12:54:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Master Thesis Romain Martignier .pdf: 1548641 bytes, checksum: 62bdf53acc0159976d2f937eb2a5e4b4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-22 / The recent global financial crisis brought significant regulatory changes in the worldwide financial industry. In Europe and in the alternative asset sector specifically, a new regulation by the name of Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive saw the daylight in 2010. This far-reaching and complex Directive with the main goal of regulating and overseeing alternative investment funds has triggered many discussions and represents an industry game-changer. Thus, this research will focus on the impact and consequences of the Directive on private equity fund managers and the role of regulators. In other words, what are the effects, what does that mean in a quantitative and qualitative sense, and how is it likely to influence the outlook of this asset class? In order to provide the reader with an extensive view on the topic, the paper will first discuss relevant theory and literature, using mix-methods and legal-dogmatic approaches. Further, descriptive case studies, analysis of existing surveys, and interviews with industry experts will supplement the paper in order to understand primary implications of the Directive with the goal of providing useful insights for further private equity regulation research. / A recente crise financeira global trouxe mudanças regulatórias significativas no setor financeiro em todo o mundo. Na Europa e no setor de ativos alternativos especificamente, um novo regulamento com o nome de Directiva Gestores de Fundos de Investimento Alternativos viu a luz do dia em 2010. Este abrangente e complexa directiva, com o principal objetivo de regulamentar e fiscalizar os fundos de investimento alternativos provocou muitas discussões. Assim, esta pesquisa vai se concentrar sobre o impacto e as consequências da directiva relativa aos gestores de fundos de private equity e o papel dos reguladores. Em outras palavras, quais são os efeitos, o que isso significa em um sentido quantitativo e qualitativo, e como ele é susceptível de influenciar as perspectivas de esta classe de activos? A fim de fornecer ao leitor uma ampla visão sobre o tema, o papel vai primeiro discutir teoria e literatura relevante, usando mixmétodos e abordagens jurídico-dogmático. Além disso, estudos descritivos de caso, análise de inquéritos existentes e entrevistas com especialistas da indústria irá complementar o papel de forma a compreender as implicações principais da directiva com o objetivo de fornecer informações úteis para pesquisas futuras private equity regulamento.

The purpose of this diploma thesis is to comprehensively describe the legal regulation of alternative investment funds in the Czech Republic. The diploma thesis is divided into seven parts. The first part deals with the definition of alternative investment funds. The aim of this section is to explain the EU legislation (acceptance and implementation of AIFMD). This part is continuously followed by the second part, which covers the current legislation of the Czech Republic. A part of this section is also a detailed description of the material scope of the Act on Investment Companies and Investment Funds. The third part is devoted to selected legal forms of alternative investment funds according to ZISIF. These are primarily a unit trust, a trust fund, a limited partnership for investment certificates (SICAR) and a joint-stock company with variable capital. The fourth part contains the definition of individual entities ensuring selected activities of the fund. In this section, a description of the person of a manager, administrator, depositary or a main sponsor is available, including a list of binding rules concerning their activities. An integral part of these chapters is also the definition of the position of individual subjects in relation to each other, i.e. the scope of their rights and...

Målet med denna rapport är att undersöka vad bolånefonder är, och hur de skiljer sig mot säkerställda obligationer. Avgränsningar görs till att endast ta upp svenska aktörer, och framförallt bostadskreditinstitutet Stabelo. Arbetet baseras på en kvalitativ metod där skillnader i säkerhet för bolånen, finansieringsstruktur, risk, avkastning samt tillsyn, kapitalkrav och riskhantering analyseras genom att bland annat studera bankers och bostadskreditinstitutet Stabelos belåningsgrad och avkastningskurvor. Skillnaderna mellan de två finansieringsformerna är, sett till vad de åstadkommer, inte stora. En slutsats är däremot att det finns en väsentlig skillnad i hur finansieringssätten är strukturerade, och att denna skillnad kan attrahera olika investerare. / The goal with this bachelor thesis is to examine what an alternative investment fund is, and how it differs from covered bonds. The report is limited to only covering Swedish market participants, and therein especially the alternative investment fund by Stabelo. The report takes a qualitative approach, where differences in financing structure, risk, yield as well as governance, capital requirement and risk management are being analysed, through studying the yield and underlying loan-to-value of banks and Stabelo. The differences between the two forms of financing, in the perspective of what they accomplish, are not immense. However, a major conclusion is that the difference lies in the way they are structured, and that this difference might suits different investors.