A practical guide to UCITS funds and their risk management

UCITS funds today represent a major share of European funds. The European
directives started with UCITS I in the mid 1980s, and have been amended
up to UCITS IV in 2009, to be followed soon by a UCITS V package.

In its first part, this book is summarizing the evolution and features of these successive
sets of European regulations. Among others, it covers the UCITS eligible
assets, the key parties involved in UCITS funds operations, their reporting and
information requirements, taxation and many other useful related subjects, to
give a short but useful understanding of the UCITS world.
Besides, the UCITS IV directive is entering into the risk management field,
which is materialized by the issue of a key document entitled Risk Measurement
and the Calculation of Global Exposure and Counterparty Risk for UCITS (the
famous ref. 10-788 Guidelines of the Committee of the European Securities
Regulators “CESR”). These Guidelines require some technical skills: the second
part of this book reproduces the CESR’s Guidelines, punctuated with comments
and prerequisites of quantitative finance, to help for a better understanding of
the content and significance of this UCITS IV objective.