Luxembourg Financial Group and Ganymede Partners have launched the Luxembourg Alternatives Ucits Platform.

LAUP is a one-stop independent and open-architecture platform for hedge fund managers to set up a Ucits III hedge fund or fund of hedge funds.

More than half of European hedge fund companies either plan to launch regulated, onshore versions of their strategies or have already done so, according to HedgeFund Intelligence, a research group.

Luxembourg is the largest fund centre outside of the US and almost 70 per cent of Ucits III funds which are authorised for cross-border distribution in the European Union are domiciled in Luxembourg.

Luxembourg Financial Group currently manages a large range of Luxembourg-domiciled vehicles, and will now open up its platform to hedge fund groups seeking to establish Ucits III hedge funds, effectively providing a turn-key solution to the creation of a Ucits III hedge fund or Ucits III fund of hedge fund.

Johan Groothaert (pictured), chief executive of Luxembourg Financial Group, and Gareth James, founder of Ganymede, together pioneered at Deutsche Bank the certificate re-wrap solution to make hedge funds accessible to German investors and launched one of the first managed account platforms.

James says: “The Ucits III framework is very attractive for those managers seeking to target private clients across Europe, but it also acts as a stamp of approval for institutional investors looking for regulatory certainty of custody, liquidity and transparency. For investors with the resources to carry out their own operational due diligence, and the investment size to dictate their own terms, there may be a more appropriate unregulated vehicles - however for the majority of hedge fund investors, Ucits III offers this framework of certainty, and after Madoff and other losses last year, it is no coincidence that more and more investors are turning to Ucits III for their hedge funds this year.”

“There has rarely been a better time to invest in hedge funds,” adds Groothaert. “The dislocation caused by the financial crisis provides numerous alpha generating opportunities for hedge funds and therefore we expect hedge funds to outperform high yield and equities in the short to medium term. Whilst it is clear hedge funds have not caused the financial crisis, the concerns of investors, politicians and regulators in respect of the off-shore alternatives industry are not untoward. Ucits hedge funds address these concerns and therefore make it easier for the hedge fund industry to attract new capital flows, which is very important for the financial markets in order to balance out some of the dislocations which currently harm the overall economy.”