The Luxembourg Commission for the Supervision of the Financial Sector (CSSF) imposed an administrative sanction on DNB Asset Management S.A. for non-compliance with professional obligations relating to general organizational requirements, supervision of delegates, codes of conduct and EMIR obligations.
Noting that the administrative sanction imposed on the mutual fund manager DNB Asset Management S.A. consists of a public statement and a reprimand, the CSSF stated that in determining the type of sanction, ‘the nature, gravity and duration of the violations present during the on-site inspection’ as well as the conduct and track record of the manager were taken into account.
The sanction was imposed on March 26, 2024 and followed an on-site inspection of the manager between March 4, 2022 and May 3, 2022.
The CSSF found several violations, including non-compliance with “general principles surrounding organizational requirements”: “The manager’s management information was insufficient in relation to portfolio management, best practice and EMIR obligations.”
In addition, the manager’s multi-year internal audit plan for 2020-2022 did not include controls for the “effectiveness of the best execution policy”, “compliance with EMIR obligations”, “adequacy of the manager’s accounting function” and “monitoring of complaints handling”.
The financial regulator also found “significant and persistent breaches in the manager’s oversight of distributors, namely: inadequate process for approval of new distributors; lack of initial due diligence on distributors; breaches of the periodic due diligence process; and lack of ongoing monitoring of distributors”.
In addition, the CSSF found that “the list of brokers used by the manager’s portfolio manager was not approved” and “the manager was not included in the valuation process due to over-reliance on the pricing committee of the group to which the manager belonged”.
In its communiqué, the CSSF noted that at an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders held on May 13, 2024, “the sole shareholder of the manager decided to change the manager’s corporate purpose and put it into voluntary liquidation.” After the manager’s voluntary liquidation was closed, it was deleted from the Luxembourg Trade and Company Register on June 26, 2024.
The CSSF removed the manager from the official list of authorized management companies on 10 July 2024 with effect from 13 May 2024. DNB Asset Management S.A. had been registered in the company register since August 1990.
On August 31, 2023, DNB Asset Management switched from DNB Asset Management S.A. to a new management company, FundPartner Solutions (Europe) S.A., a subsidiary of the Pictet Group.
