Luxembourg, Evolution and Fund Structures

Episode 2, with Tim Mol, COO

My name is Tim Mol. I’m a 53. I’m the COO and a partner of Carlisle Management Company. I’ve been at the company since the beginning, so I started the company with Jose. My background is, I started with the financial offshore industry, first in Rotterdam and after in Curacao. That’s also where I started to be introduced to the asset class. Jose and I thought we could do it better than the clients we served at the time, so we started the company.

Why is Carlisle Management Company based out of Luxembourg?
So basically there are two jurisdictions where you can go. Ireland is one of them. Luxembourg is the other. In my opinion, Luxembourg is the better suited one because they have a long history of the fund industry. It’s also the biggest. Luxembourg is also a little bit of a nicer country to live in, so that’s why we started here.

How have you seen the asset class evolve over the last 20 years?
I think the regulation changed quite a lot for live segments for the better. When I started to get introduced to the asset class, it was about 20 years ago. I think 20 years ago, it wasn’t as transparent as it is today. It wasn’t as regulated as it is today. So I think that’s better for the consumer as well. A lot more transparency and a lot more openness in the asset class, which I think is good. I think the bad players, let’s say, got weeded out, which is very good for the industry.

How does Carlisle’s fund structures benefit investors?
I think we have a FCP CIF which is tax transparent, which is very suitable for the life settlement class. A life settlement is not considered a security. So it needs to be handled differently than a security in order to make use of tax treaties between different countries, between Luxembourg, the US and Luxembourg, where the investor is situated. You need a tax transparent structure which you set up as an FCP CIF. It’s fairly flexible. You can have a lot of unit classes, which shoots a lot of different types of clients.