There were a couple of interesting articles on Luxembourg financial regulation in Mondays FTfm publication. The first was on the allegation by victims of the Madoff fraud that the regulator was “inept” because UBS were not being forced to compensate investors in the $1.4 billion Luxalpha fund that fed money to Madoff. UBS were the funds investment manager and custodian and should therefore have paid compensation under the regulator’s rules. But they are declining to enforce their own rules it is claimed. There also seem to be difficulties in investors pursuing legal claims in Luxembourg over this “due to bureaucratic hurdles”.
I have past experience of dealing with the Luxembourg regulator (the CSSF) over the actions of Paypal some years back. Paypal in Europe (and the UK) was and still is regulated by the CSSF. They proved to be totally useless in dealing with my complaint. I came to the conclusion that Paypal chose that regulatory venue for good reason.
I would be very wary of investing in any business that was registered or regulated in Luxembourg. The UK regulator might be quite inept at times, but at least they try to some extent to deal with complaints. The Luxembourg regulator seems to be asleep at the wheel or to simply not have the resources to provide the required service.
Surprisingly the second article in FTfm was how funds are moving to Luxembourg and Ireland spurred by Brexit so as to give them access to EU markets. This is being done by the use of “supermancos” (super management companies) that provide administration services for multiple fund providers and effectively it seems act as a “front” with the appropriate regulatory licences. The EU has laid down some rules that require them to have some “substance” but all that means apparently is that they need to have up to seven staff rather than just one or two. Does that inspire confidence? Not in me.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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Great blog, thank you