Financial and insurance services

Description

Invest Northern Ireland is intending to publish a tender for an FCA approved Fund Manager to manage and deliver the Successor Seed Equity Fund on behalf of Invest NI for a 10 year period (5 year investment/5 year realisation). The legal agreements will also incorporate provision for four 1-year extensions to the contract. The procurement will also include management of the Proof of Concept Grant Fund for a 6 year period (5 years awarding grants/1 year making final grant payments). The proposed Seed Equity Fund is a 30 000 000 GBP equity fund and the Proof of Concept Grant Fund is a 4 500 000 GBP grant fund. See II.2.4 for more details. Invest Northern Ireland is intending to publish a tender for an FCA approved Fund Manager to manage and deliver the Successor Seed Equity Fund on behalf of Invest NI for a ten year period (5 year investment/5 year realisation). The legal agreements will also incorporate provision for 4 x 1-year extensions to the contract. The procurement will also include management of the Proof of Concept Grant Fund for a six year period (5 years awarding grants/1 year making final grant payments). The proposed Seed Equity Fund is a 30 000 000 GBP equity fund and the Proof of Concept Grant Fund is a 4 500 000 GBP grant fund. Currently fund managers who are not based in the UK but want to operate a UK based fund may be currently relying on “passporting” their regulatory regime (e.g. CBI Central Bank of in Ireland) to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, with Brexit, this may all change. To cut through the assist in addressing this uncertainty, the FCA has introduced the “Temporary Passporting Regime” (“TPR”) which provides a backstop to ensure firms and funds can continue their business in the UK with minimal disruption. In order to benefit from the TPR so that any such fund managers currently relying on passporting can are to make a notification to the FCA before 28.3.2019. Therefore, any non-UK fund managers who are relying on FCA passporting and who may wish to tender for the Successor Seed Equity Fund, should ensure they have made a TPR notification in accordance with the TPR requirements of the FCA before by 28 March.