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In Germany, open‐ended funds represent the prevailing form of indirect real estate investment for retail and institutional investors. The purpose of this paper is to address whether significant performance differences occur between retail and institutional funds.

The relative fund performance of 137 funds investing in Germany and abroad are each measured against tailored Investment Property Databank performance benchmarks of direct property investments. Such benchmarks shall mimic the asset allocation of any particular fund. Data on retail fund performance are retrieved from the fund association BVI, the data on institutional fund performance are derived from the individual statements of accounts for each fund.

German open‐ended funds show significant differences in mean relative returns. The differences are mainly driven by the respective asset allocation of the funds, although relative returns against tailored benchmarks as dependent variables are supposed to offset country‐specific return fluctuations. Institutional investors tend to be better‐off than retail investors.

Liquidity holdings are not (and can not be) extracted from fund performance with the given data. In this regard, it must be acknowledged that retail funds by nature are induced to carry more liquidity. Second, the high significance of the factor asset allocation may indicate that country‐specific benchmarks could still be tailored more effectively. However, the conclusions from this paper remain unaffected. Ex post variations in the grouping of funds explain additional fund performance variance. In particular, it would be interesting to analyze the performance patterns of single‐investor funds and the influence or control that is being exercised by single‐investors in institutional funds.

Results give new insights into the performance of open‐ended real estate funds. The analysis helps explaining performance patterns and contributes to an improved understanding of the German indirect real estate investment market.

This study examines the performance of both open‐ended and closed‐end mutual funds – as fixed income securities and vehicles for capital gains. A determination will be made of which categories one group was able to outperform the other and to recognize why a group performs better or worse over time.

To explore the issues and questions put forward for consideration by stakeholders by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in its discussion paper dated February 2017 – the purpose of which was to gather stakeholders’ views on illiquid assets and open-ended investment funds and seek to provide a basis for debate by setting out several policies for FCA intervention.

Explains and discusses the potential consequences of each issue and question put forward by the FCA, including definitions of illiquid assets, liquidity management tools, treatment of professional and retail investors, portfolio restrictions and liquidity buffers, valuation of illiquid assets, direct intervention by the FCA, enhanced disclosure, and secondary markets for illiquid assets.

What was found in the course of the work? The decision to suspend redemptions by these large property funds has brought to the forefront the key question of whether real estate or other illiquid assets are appropriate for open-ended funds. Many questions and considerations remain as to what impact the FCA’s proposed changes could have on the industry. The FCA consultation closed on 8 May 2017 and the results could determine new and adapted rules.

Practical guidance from experienced funds lawyers.

According to normative‐rational investment decision models, investors who seek office buildings should select markets which show high employment numbers in office related sectors such as Finance, Insurance, Real Estate (FIRE) and Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). This view is challenged by behavioural studies, which find that the investors' willingness for analysis and the structure of their decision‐making processes in practice notably limit such an influence. Looking at German office markets, the purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the aforementioned connection between employment structure and market selection holds.

Qualitative interviews with German investment experts are analysed in a manner that differentiates between investor types. Behavioural economics form a theoretical basis to identify investor type specific attitudes towards investment markets and the resulting market selection processes. The findings are tested by logistic regressions which connect the spatial structure of office investments with employment data.

A sector‐specific employment structure does not have a direct but an indirect influence on the market selection. The existing theoretical contradiction is resolved by this indirect influence. Investor type specific risk profiles and business models determine varying spatial patterns of market selection.

The study shows that attitudes towards markets, business logics and decision processes differ between insurance companies and open‐ended funds. Researchers should be aware that empirical results may not always be valid for all institutional investors. In some cases a differentiating research design according to investor type may be necessary.

The study identifies a set of minimum requirements with regard to building and market characteristics open‐ended funds use for filtering in German secondary/regional markets. Market selection by these funds and insurance companies correlates with relative employment in FIRE‐ and KIBS‐branches.

This paper overcomes decision‐theoretical contradictions and gives empirical evidence for the importance of the employment structure on market selection.

The paper aims to explain regulatory issues and considerations as to future regulatory changes that Chinese regulators may implement with regard to the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) regime.

The paper describes: the regulators responsible for QFII; the relevant regulations; the qualification process, including eligibility requirements and the regulators' preference for qualifying long‐term, buy‐side institutional investors (usually pension funds, insurance companies and mutual funds); the concept of the “open‐ended China fund”; rules governing the remittance and repatriation of capital and the lock‐up period; a provision that prohibits QFIIs from transferring or selling their quotas (for example, to create structured products offering their customers synthetic exposure to the Chinese securities market); available account structures; the investment process, including investment restrictions, required disclosure of interests, the short swing profit rule, over‐purchases and erroneous trades, stock index futures trading, and insider dealing and manipulation of the market; withholding taxes; and recent developments.

China's QFII regime has been a key component of China's staged opening up of its financial markets, in particular its public securities market, permitting foreign investors to gain access to the previously restricted RMB denominated A share market under relatively strict regulatory oversight.

Practical guidance from an experienced financial services lawyer is provided.

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are regarded as being among the most advanced of the Central European countries in terms of financial sector development. This paper reviews the legislative and regulatory background to the development of investment funds in these countries and highlights the impact that governmental attitudes and mass privatisation programmes have had on fund market development.

Examines the marketing activities of funds in the mobilisation of mainly private savings, in a market traditionally dominated by the bigger investment institutions. Centres analysis on development from early primary marketing methods characteristic of the 1960s to present day, sophisticated methods, which have evolved as funds moved to maturity. Highlights factors that have led to a certain loss of confidence in open‐end funds – recommending a policy of wider diversification into all branches of the investment market. Concludes that legislative conformity within European countries regarding fund activities appears still some distance away despite OECD initiatives.

In this paper, we develop various valuation models for closed-end mutual funds under different sets of stochastic processes for the underlying assets. Since we used different stochastic processes from previous literature, it was possible to derive more interesting implications regarding investment strategies, discount puzzles of the funds, and valuation models. In particular, by utilizing Brownian motions and optimal stopping time framework, we succeeded in developing more realistic valuation model, which indicates that we can understand more easily about decision makings regarding optimal timing of reorganization from the closed-end funds to open-ended funds, optimal timing of trading of closed-end funds to realize maximum profits, and optimal design of closed-end fund structure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of investor confidence on mutual fund performance in two relatively vulnerable but leading emerging markets, India and Pakistan.

A pooled ordinary least squared (OLS) model is used to look at two alternative measures of investor confidence and test for the relationship between investor confidence and mutual fund returns. To check the robustness of the findings, the authors also implement two-stage least squares and generalized method of moments techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity problems in the regressors.

The paper finds that the returns of mutual funds are positively associated with investor confidence and an interaction effect exists between investor confidence and persistence in performance. The paper also confirms that returns from mutual funds are associated with different fund characteristics such as fund size, turnover, expense, liquidity, performance persistence and the fund’s age. These findings remain robust to alternative model specifications and measures of investor confidence.

While the previous literature mainly focuses on mutual fund characteristics and the macroeconomic determinants of mutual fund returns, this paper demonstrates that investor confidence plays an important role in determining mutual fund performance. The authors attribute this finding to two relatively unique features of the emerging markets in the study. A lack of awareness of mutual funds as being a low-cost investment vehicle and the interplay of cultural and behavioral changes have prevented investor’s savings from being channeled into investment products, away from gold or property.