Open-Ended Funds To Lock-Up Funds - Are Fund Managers Changing Focus?

Associate Bicrom Das takes a look at a 'paradigm expansion' of open-ended fund managers sharpening their focus onto lock-up funds.

The Cayman Islands have traditionally been most closely associated with open-ended hedge fund products, wherein managers permit their investors regular liquidity. Such funds employ a variety of different strategies but crucially all issue interests, typically shares in exempted companies, which are redeemable at the option of the investors. This liquidity causes such funds to fall within the ambit of the Mutual Funds Law of the Cayman Islands and consequently be regulated by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.

Closed-ended private equity funds have also always had a significant presence in the Cayman Islands. The major private equity houses, a large number of which are advised by Walkers, have historically structured funds, be it standalone funds or feeders into onshore entities, in the Cayman Islands, and that trend is showing no