On 10 February 2015, the Deloitte Luxembourg valuation conference aimed at AIFMs gathered more than 150 alternative fund managers and industry experts, confirming the interest of the Luxembourg business community for this topic. This conference was the 2nd of the Deloitte Valuation 2015 conference cycle, which covers various topics and challenges impacting valuation throughout the year.

In the AIFMD era, fund managers will have to revisit the way investments are valued. Dealing with alternative assets such as private equity or real estate investments is a complex matter given their unquoted and illiquid nature. In addition, the use of multi-layered structures that rely on leverage and various hybrid instruments to optimise returns also renders the valuation of these products difficult.
Pierre Masset, Corporate Finance Partner at Deloitte Luxembourg, explains: “Valuing these assets requires significant technical skills and the use of professional judgment. There is no automatic answer. With professional judgment, comes the risk of introducing subjectivity in the process. In this context, AIFMD provides guiding principles to promote best practices around governance of valuation processes.”

During the conference, Joachim Heukmes, Corporate Finance Director at Deloitte Luxembourg, presented the various alternatives available to AIFMs in order to comply with new standards on governance required by the directive, including:

• Delegate the valuation function to an external third party
• Perform valuations internally and ensure independence between the valuation function and the portfolio management function
• Perform valuations internally while seeking assistance from an external third party for specific matters (e.g. model review, market data input, sanity checks, etc.)

Exchanging their views further on this much-debated topic, the speakers, together with a panel of industry experts shared their practical experience in order to answer to key questions that AIFMs are facing while setting up their new valuation processes.
The panelists included:

• Moderator - Pierre Masset, Corporate Finance Partner at Deloitte Luxembourg
• Alexandre Dumont, Chief Executive Officer, BIL Manage Invest
• Simon Powell, Advent’s European Compliance Director
• Antonio Thomas, Partner, ManagementPlus
• Jérôme Wittamer, Head of Investment Management, Genii Capital