Pinsent Masons Advises Baillie Gifford Europe on Complex Licensing Application

The application involved changing Baillie Gifford Europe from a MiFID authorised business, into a MegaManco, a dual authorised UCITS Management Company and AIFM with MiFID top-up permissions. This includes, individual portfolio management, receipt and transmissions of orders and investment advice permissions.

The new entity will be used to manage Baillie Gifford UCITS funds range, Alternative Investment Funds and segregated mandate business, with assets under management in the region of circa €20 billion.

The Pinsent Masons team advising Baillie Gifford Europe was led by head of asset management and investment funds in Ireland Gayle Bowen, and associate Ruth Hennessy.

Commenting on the granting of this licence, Gayle Bowen said:

"We have been working on this project with Baillie Gifford Europe for several months and are delighted to see it come to a successful conclusion. Despite its complexity, we not only achieved their ambitious deadline, we were cleared of comment two weeks early.Having this new permission allows Baillie Gifford Europe to streamline their various business lines into one capitalised structure, rather than have multiple regulated entities with different capital and reporting obligations, and opens up new business opportunities for them.

Our thanks to the Baillie Gifford Europe team, in particular Lindsay Gold (CEO), Ross Carlin (COO) and Colin Crawford (Manager) who worked hard in partnership with us on the application process.”

The project, which involved a complex licence-arrangement underpinned by Baillie Gifford’s extensive EU-wide distribution channels, saw the team at Pinsent Masons collaborate closely with the Central Bank of Ireland on issues relating to passporting applications, funds supervision and MiFID.