On 24 September 2018, Consob issued paper on hedge fund shareholdings.

• Harmonization of regulations on collective investment schemes (CIS), with UCITS regulation, AIFM directive, has expanded the area of operation of asset managers.
• Alternative investment funds are emerging as increasingly relevant shareholders.
• In light of such market development, the paper explores the interaction of the CIS
  regulation with corporate governance regulation and prudential supervision rules.
• Shows that application of takeover rules to CIS as shareholders raises complexity.
• These complexities derive from fact that the Italian law on listed issuers implicitly assumes shareholders mainly individuals/joint-stock companies rather than funds.
• Paper also discussed issues posed by the acquisition of qualifying shareholdings in capital of banks by CIS in the context of the compliance with micro-stability rules.
• Paper argues that objectives of CIS regulations, transparency, fairness of conducts etc may trade off with need to ensure compliance with prudential rules for company.
• Though CIS policies targeted to specific risk-return profile, declared in prospectus, the need to consider further interests, may not be in best interest of CIS investors.