Professional Investors
Professional investor is generally an investor who possesses the experience, knowledge and expertise to make its own investment decisions and properly assess the risk that it incurs. In order to be considered a professional investor, the entity or person must comply with the criteria as follows:
Entities which are required to be authorised or regulated to operate in the financial markets. The list below includes all authorised entities carrying out the characteristic activities of the entities mentioned:
- Credit Institutions
- Investment Firms
- Other authorised or regulated financial institutions
- Insurance undertakings
- Collective Investment schemes and management companies of such schemes
- Pension funds and management companies of such funds
- Commodity and commodity derivatives dealers
- Other institutional Investors
Large undertakings meeting two of the following size requirements, on a proportional basis:
- balance sheet total at least EUR 20,000,000;
- net turnover at least EUR 40,000,000;
- own funds at least EUR 2,000,000;
National and regional governments, public bodies that manage public debt, central banks, international and supranational institutions such as the World Bank, the Internal Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the European Investment Bank and other similar international organisations.
Other institutional investors whose main activity is to invest in financial instruments, including entities dedicated to the securitisation of assets or other financing transactions.
Where the investor of an Alternative Investment Fund is an undertaking referred to above, the Fund must inform it prior to any provision of services that, on the basis of the information available to the Fund, the investor is deemed to be a professional investor, and will be treated as such unless the Fund and the investor agree otherwise. The Fund must also inform the investor that he can request a variation of the terms of the agreement in order to secure a higher degree of protection.
It is the responsibility of the investor, considered to be a professional investor, to ask for a higher level of protection when it deems it is unable to properly assess or manage the risks involved.
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