BlackRock is to hard close two of its Luxembourg-domiciled funds and soft close a UK-based product to protect their investment strategies, effective in 7 September 2013.
The asset manager intends to close both the £1.59 billion BSF European Absolute Return fund, co-managed by Vincent Devlin and Stefan Gries, and the £1.64 billion BGF Continental European Flexible fund, managed by Alister Hibbert.
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Both these funds will be closed to further investments and the firm will provide 60 days notice to investors of the change.
BlackRock is planning to soft close Hibbert’s £1.96 billion BlackRock European Dynamic fund with heightened preliminary charges until it reaches its capacity limit of £2.5 billion. The fund has been closed to protect existing investors and investment strategy.
Investment for the dynamic fund will be through new unit classes FA and FD, with a preliminary charge of 1% for intermediaries and a 5% for direct investors.
These changes are being made due to strong levels of subscriptions over a sustained period of time and to help control the size of the funds.
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By GlobalDataTony Stenning, BlackRock head of UK retail, said: "We work closely and continuously with our risk and portfolio management teams across BlackRock to ensure our funds are being optimally managed.
"We have taken the decision to introduce these changes to protect the interests of our existing investors by ensuring the Funds can continue to be managed in accordance with their investment mandates," he added.
