Nicosia – Cyprus had €8.58 bln in Funds and Assets Under Management in the 4th quarter of 2020, up by 10.3% from the 3rd quarter and an increase of 3.8% from the last quarter of 2019, the island’s financial services regulator, CySEC, stated in its quarterly report.
The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) said in its latest quarterly statistics bulletin that it supervises 283 management companies and Undertakings of Collective Investments (UCIs), of which 197 have operations in Cyprus.
Specifically, CySEC supervises 164 externally managed UCIs, 56 internally managed UCIs and 63 external fund managers.
The total number of management companies includes 31 Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs), 81 sub-threshold AIFMs, 3 UCITS management companies and four dual license entities (AIFMs and UCITS management companies).
AIFMs are EU-registered and regulated hedge funds, private equity funds and real estate investment funds.
A new regulatory category was introduced in the 4th Quarter of 2020 regarding the small alternative investment fund managers or Small AIFMs. There are 17 that represent CIFs, that received their approval from CySEC to provide AIF management functions.
The UCIs, run by the management companies, had a net asset value of €6.99 bln.
The CySEC bulletin said that UCITS invested heavily in transferable securities (81%), followed by investments in bank deposits (10%).
AIFs, AIFLNPs and RAIFs mainly invest in private equity (43%), while 14.7% of the AUM are invested in real estate.
From all the UCIs, 119 invest in Cyprus entirely or partially, and €2.15 bln (25.1%) are investments made in Cyprus, 54% are in private equity and 14% in real estate.
Regarding the specific sectors that UCIs invested in during the 4th quarter of 2020, assets under management in the energy sector totalled €246.2 ml (2.86% of total), while €29.9 ml was invested in FinTech (0.35%), €72.1 ml in shipping (0.84%), €28.1 ml in the sustainability sector (0.32%) and €1.5 ml in cryptocurrencies (0.017%).
