The Government has approved the legal drafting of the Investment Limited Partnership (Amendment) Bill 2017, according to an announcement published by the Minister of Finance on 18 July 2017. This approval represents a significant milestone in the Government and industry's efforts to revise the existing limited partnership legislation in order to make Irish limited partnerships a vehicle of choice for private equity and real asset funds.
Private equity is becoming an increasingly large player in the global financial markets. While it has always been possible to establish a private equity fund as a corporate structure, such as an Irish Collective Asset Management Vehicle, a unit trust or a common contractual fund, often the investor preference in the context of private equity fund structures is for a limited partnership structure. Although the Investment Limited Partnership Act 1994 already provides for such a structure in Ireland, this Act needs to be updated in some key respects to meet the needs of global private equity funds.
Once the revised limited partnership framework is in place, Ireland will offer the full suite of preferred legal structures for real asset/private equity investment. We expect Ireland to become a jurisdiction of choice for the domiciling and servicing of real assets, private equity and infrastructure funds, much in the same way that it currently is for other alternative strategies such as hedge funds and real estate.