The Second Amending Central Bank UCITS Regulations have been just been published (dated 27 July 2017).

The Second Amending Regulations amend the main Central Bank UCITS Regulations issued in October 2015. Those Regulations are the core element of the Central Bank's regulatory rulebook for Irish UCITS and supplement the main Irish UCITS Regulations (that transpose the UCITS Directive in Irish law).

The Second Amending regulations deal primarily with non-material tweaks and clarifications to the main Regulations. However, there are a couple of notable points, related to CP86 (the Irish funds governance framework revamp), as follows:

1. The Central Bank was due to introduce location rules requiring, for most cases, (i) half of the directors of a fund/fund manager to be resident in the EEA; and (ii) half of the fund's managerial functions to be carried out by at least 2 designated persons resident in the EEA. 

So what of the UK, post-Brexit? Interestingly, the Second Amending Regulations now make the two rules above conditional on such persons being resident in the EEA "or such other country as the [Central] Bank may, taking into account criteria regarding effective supervision, determine". Presumably, this paves the way to designate the UK post-Brexit as an additional acceptable jurisdiction for this residence requirement.

2. CP86 is due to require, by 30 June 2018, that funds/fund managers must make all of their records immediately retrievable in or from Ireland. In terms of timing of the introduction of this new rule, it has been included as a specific provision in the Second Amending Regulations. It therefore brings forward this CP86 obligation and makes it a legislative requirement that applies to UCITS management companies and self-managed UCITS with immediate effect.