Launching a European CLO Platform: Regulatory considerations for CLO managers

I think in terms of the kind of conversations that I would have with new CLO managers, they're always very keen to get ahead of any regulatory gating items that might stop or hinder the launch of the European CLO platform.

And so...

It's fair to say that, you know, Collateral Manager UK Council probably shoulder a lot of the burden in terms of securitisation regulation, risk retention.

But there are some kind of distinct Irish pieces where we need to provide regulatory advice.

The one that springs to my mind is MIFID and the Irish Safe Harbour exemption that may be available.

Would you be happy to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Maybe just to give you a sense as well as to how we sort of work with the CLO practice.

So in the regulatory team, we provide advice to a wide range of regulated entities, banks, investment firms, payment institutions, e-money firms, et cetera.

In

the CLO space,

we advise... on structuring, we advise managers setting up operations, new legal developments and all that sort of stuff.

So we work with you and the team on a really regular basis.

In terms of the safe harbour, that's probably the piece of law that we advise the most of, comes up all of the time.

And I think, you know, it's particularly important because it allows non-EU managers to provide services to Irish SPVs without needing a licence, so without needing to be authorised under our MIFID implementing legislation,

which

otherwise applies where you provide investment services in relation to financial instruments.

So if you're portfolio managing, advising, et cetera.

So this is a really important exemption for our CLO manager clients.

So to make use of the safe harbor, there's kind of five things that have to be true.

So five conditions that you have to meet.

So we'll go through them.

Some are easier to conceptualize or think about than others.

So the first one is an easy one.