BETTER FINANCE welcomes the Commission’s continued efforts towards deeper, better integrated financial markets, where individual investors can find a greater diversity of cost-efficient investment opportunities.
The Commission’s intention to review the regulatory framework for venture and growth capital funds—small AIFs and EuVECA funds—is much welcome, as the scaling up of these funds is an essential part of the emergence of truly vibrant pan-European capital markets. Ensuring that the managers of these funds face no undue barriers to their development is, then, essential.
But regulatory requirements that ensure a high degree of protection to individual investors are never an undue barrier. To the contrary, they are an asset for the EU inasmuch as they create a legal environment that fosters trust.
It is individual investors’ money that is invested in venture and growth capital funds, even though indirectly: institutional investors channel EU citizens’ savings. Whatever “simplification” is implemented to ease fund managers’ operations, it must maintain a high degree of investor protection.
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