Sebi brings in revised norms for foreign investments in AIFs

Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has revised rules related to foreign investment in alternative investment funds (AIFs).

At the time of onboarding investors, the manager of an AIF should ensure that the foreign investor is a resident of the country whose securities market regulator is a signatory to the International Organization of Securities Commission's (IOSCO) multilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU), or a signatory to a bilateral MoU with Sebi, the capital markets regulator said on Friday.

At present, Sebi rules allow AIFs to raise funds from any investor - whether Indian, foreign or non-resident Indian - by way of issue of units.

AIFs may accept commitments from a government or government-related investor that does not meet the signatory condition, if the investor is a resident in the country as approved by the Indian government, Sebi said.

The investor or its underlying investors contributing 25% or more in the corpus of the investor, should not be mentioned in the sanctions list of the United Nations Security Council, it said.

The investor must not be a resident of a country identified by the Financial Action Task Force as a jurisdiction having anti-money laundering deficiencies, it added.

In case an investor who has been onboarded to the scheme of an AIF does not subsequently meet these conditions, the manager of the AIF should not draw down any further capital contribution from such an investor, until the said conditions are met, Sebi said.

The new rules also apply to investors already onboarded to existing schemes of AIFs who do not meet these new conditions, the regulator added.