Cross-Border Distribution of Collective Investment Products in the EU

This chapter analyzes the current regulatory framework for cross-border distribution of investment funds and submits some proposals to improve it. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a schematic description of the legal taxonomy for collective investment schemes. Section 3 addresses the EU disclosure regimes that apply to the distribution of various types of investment funds. Sections 4 and 5 consider conduct-of-business rules and, respectively, the legal framework for the allocation of supervisory powers on product regulation when fund units are distributed in more than one country. Section 6 provides some data that help assess the performance of the current framework for cross-border distribution. It then analyzes some of the residual legal rules and supervisory practices that still make cross-border distributions of funds more burdensome than purely national distributions, whether these restrictions are set forth in the country where investors are domiciled (Section 7) or in the fund's home country (Section 8).