About Country Information A-Z Section

Country Information A-Z contains information on investment funds in 69 developed and transitional economies, and is constantly expanding.

Use of a standardised format and consistency of presentation from country to country makes it easy for you to find the information you need and to make comparisons

Information for each country is divided into seven sections, described below. Every section can be reached by pressing the relevant button on the left hand bar of the country page concerned.

• “Introduction” – provides the following information:
  • Types of collective investment funds

    We define investment funds as portfolios of assets that are publicly offered, collectively owned, usually diversified and whose assets are valued at market value. They are divided into units or shares for the purpose of defining ownership. Cadogan Education offers you a standard approach, which permits any investment fund, irrespective of its country of domicile to be described and categorized by

    • 1) legal type: corporate, contractual or trust
    • 2) operational structure: open ended (issues participations and redeems them continuously), closed ended (issues participations once and then issues and redeems on special occasions only), or sometimes limited or interval (issues and redeems participations at regular specified intervals)

  • Key legislation

    Here we provide you with the title of the key legislative document governing investment funds and their service providers, and a hyperlink to the text of such document in either the national language or the English language version. In most countries this is usually a Law passed by the Parliament: either a specific Investment Funds Law or a section in the Securities Law, which covers either generally or specifically funds’ formation and authorisation, management structure, management, safekeeping of assets, capital, investment and borrowing powers, prospectus, publicity and marketing, mergers and acquisitions. For countries in transition, whose fund legislation is unavailable in English, we provide Brief Legislative Summary, which covers key legislative provisions.

    It is common for more detailed regulations to be established under such laws by regulatory bodies. Some transitional countries have yet to pass fund legislation so their existing funds are governed by Presidential decrees and a set of detailed regulations developed by a regulator.

    Corporate funds are also usually governed by Corporate Legislation and trust funds by trust legislation or precedent.

  • Fund Regulator

    This is a title and a link to the website of the body authorized (usually by the Law) to exercise supervision over funds and entities providing services to funds. It creates detailed rules for funds’ operations (regulations), authorises (licenses or registers) funds and their management companies, and usually also key personnel and directors, monitors funds’ and service providers’ operations, applies sanctions to those who violate legislation and regulations and deals with public complaints. Fund regulators are usually either Securities Commissions and increasingly mega-regulators, responsible for regulation of a whole range of financial services.

  • Trade Association

    Here you will find a title and a link to the website of a national trade association of fund managers and/or funds and sometimes other entities and individuals working in fund industry, whose task is to promote the industry. Trade associations may introduce their own standards or codes of conduct, which may be more demanding than regulatory standards but are applicable only to members of the Association; they also provide information about the industry to the public and represent the industry to governmental and opinion forming bodies. Trade associations are funded by their members. Usually trade associations have a staff, which run the association on a daily basis. As a rule these people are helpful if you ask them for information about fund industry in their country. In our experience websites of national fund trade associations are key sources of information about national investment fund industries.

• “History” – this describes and explains fund industries of emerging, transitional and developing countries in some detail. We particularly provide a brief summary of the background and history of development of investment funds, which covers the origin and early days of investment funds in these countries. The pages on developed markets do not have “History” section, since there is a wealth of data already available from other sources

• “Legislation” – this section provides a Brief Legislative Summary summary, which covers key legislative provisions of the document governing investment funds. This is given only for developing markets where the English version of the document is not available. This brief Legislative Summary is only intended to provide a general idea of funds legislation; for full legislative coverage and detail, please, consult original texts of legislation and regulations. Such provisions also change frequently so the original documents always should be consulted

• “Fund data” – this section includes annual statistics on number of management companies, the number of investment funds and value of assets under management starting from 1992 onwards, where available. The statistics per country are presented in standardised table form; values are nominated in national currencies, USD or Euro (for countries that are EU members). GIFIC figures are derived from local sources, usually regulators or trade associations. Sometimes we also provide lists of licensed management companies and funds. The data is only intended to give an approximate idea of the industry’s size and evolution, rather than to be precise to the last cent. For precise figures please consult national information resources (eg trade associations, regulators, fund operators). Also view “Statistics” section on our “Related Links” menu

• “Links” – this section is given per country and provides links to other websites, containing fund-related information. The target websites contain information in national languages or translations into English. Lists of links are similarly structured from country to country and major categories include links to fund related information:
  • on the regulator’s site
  • on relevant trade associations’ sites
  • on sites of professional service providers (usually per county industry overviews by accountancy and law firms)
  • on sites of rating and fund information agencies
  • on specialized financial websites and other Internet publications

  Most links are very specific. For instance we usually don’t just give you the address of the Regulator, but specify a link taking you to a list of licensed funds on the Regulator’s site. Every link is accompanied with a brief description of the relevant website and sometimes with our assessment of the site’s quality. Cadogan Education cannot be held responsible for truthfulness and completeness of information on the sites for which we indicate links. Despite our efforts to keep only valid links on our list, you may occasionally find that some of them are out of operation. Sometimes these failures are temporary and sometimes not. Please let us know about defective links. Also please send us any good fund related links that could usefully be added

• “Service providers” – this section contains names and details of companies and organizations providing services to investment funds in different countries. As listing is commercial service offered to service providers in relevant markets these lists do not constitute a comprehensive list of such providers

• “Special reports” – this section presents in-depth reports and overviews of fund industry development, made by Cadogan Education or other specialist companies. The newsletter available upon registration will inform you about new arrivals of special reports

Strictly defined and consistently used terminology: you know what we mean

Investment funds terminology is diverse and not always consistently used in different countries. Sometimes very different things are given the same name and in other cases similar things are called different names. The fund terminology that exists in each country is a result of the history of the development of that country’s funds industry, legal tradition, culture, linguistic preferences and many other factors. When national terminology is translated into English, even greater confusion can result!

Country Information A-Z uses internally consistent terminology, which makes it possible to describe any aspect of collective investment vehicles of any country in terms understandable to other nations and relate it to a the vocabulary used to describe aspects of similar collective investment vehicles in other countries. You can consult our Glossary to find out meanings of about 250 words related to fund and asset management.

Most websites dedicated to domestic investment funds in different countries use their national languages. To make your surfing fund related sites in foreign languages easier we provide you with some original terminology in national languages, usually written in Italics.

History of Country Information A-Z

The first pages of Country Information appeared on the Internet site of Cadogan Financial in 1998. They covered only transitional countries and contained narratives about mass privatisation, ups and downs of the first generations of collective investment vehicles in those countries and analysis of funds’ legislation.

Taking into account the development and growth of fund industries in many emerging transitional, and developing countries which has gradually brought them into line with the industries in developed markets in terms of structures and products if not volumes, we decided to redesign the site, adding information on developed markets funds and shifting the site’s emphasis from narrative to a road map or portal.

However for most countries of developing markets access to the previous site format is available under the special category “History”.

Disclaimer: While we have done our best to ensure that the information contained in this website is from reputable and reliable sources, the majority of information given does derive from other sources. No representation or warranty therefore can be made as to the accuracy of any information given or as to the quality of organisations for which links are given. Readers therefore are advised not to rely upon the data given as a basis for decision-making without undertaking their own researches.