Q4 Irish Fund Statistics Show Further Growth

On 8 March 2013, the Central Bank of Ireland issued statistics for Q4 2012 on investment funds resident in Ireland.

The total number of shares or units in issue by the end of Q4 2012 increased by 4.4% to €932 billion. This increase was due to revaluations of €11.5 billion and net new subscriptions of €28 billion.

Irish investment funds were recorded as holding €171 billion sovereign bonds and €253.4 billion of corporate bonds at the end of Q4. There was a 3% outflow from US sovereigns and this may have been due to fears over the fiscal cliff. In addition, there were slight outflows from Belgian, German and French sovereigns bonds. However, increases in Italian and Spanish sovereign holdings were noted in Q4 2012 (23% and 49% respectively). This renewed interest in Italy and Spain may be due to increased confidence following the announcement of the Outright Monetary Transactions program, an initiative to support countries within the Eurozone struggling with their debt.

Statistics gathered on different categories of funds show that, during Q4 2012, bond funds experienced inflows of €11.6 billion and positive revaluations of €1.1 billion. This means that bond funds have now witnessed positive inflows for four consecutive quarters.

Equity funds saw net transaction inflows of €7.3 billion and positive revaluations of €5.8 billion. New stock acquired by equity funds was concentrated in Asia and is most likely due to the announcement of proposed monetary policy actions by the Bank of Japan.

Hedge funds increased in value to €82.7 billion with net transaction inflows of €3.3 billion and positive revaluations of €0.7 billion.

Other funds (meaning those other than bond funds, equity funds, mixed funds, real estate funds or hedge funds) saw inflows of €5.8 billion and positive revaluations of €3.8 billion. This sees an increase in overall stock to €161.3 billion.