Finance Magazine – Ireland looks likely to follow the lead set by Germany and the UK by offering retail investors the chance to buy into hedge funds for the first time. Leading figures in the Irish investment management industry believe that Ireland will follow in the footsteps of other countries in the medium term by giving retail investors an opportunity to buy into hedge funds for the first time.
Brian Gray, Goodbody Stockbroker’s chief investment officer, said that the individual Irish investor should be able to buy into hedge funds in Ireland in the medium-term rather than in the near future. ‘It will be an evolution rather than a revolution. There is a slow trend in that direction. As the pace picks up in the institutional market, we’ll see growth in the retail market,’ Gray told FINANCE magazine.
The UK and Germany are already offering hedge funds to retail clients. In 2004, Germany introduced new regulations that allowed asset managers to sell hedge funds to retail investors. Deutsche Bank now offers German retail investors the chance to buy into a hedge fund from as little as E124. Individual investors can opt for either Deutsche Bank’s ‘Hedge Long-Short Equity Market Neutral Fund’ or its ‘Hedge Long-Short Equity Opportunistic Fund’. The market neutral fund has equal long and short positions whereas the opportunistic fund can bet on rising markets by taking more long positions or on falling markets by taking more short positions.
