Collective Investment, Property and Coin Schemes

This paper sets out the decision of the UK Supreme Court in Asset Land Plc v FCA [2016] UKSC 17 where it was held that the land banking scheme there required authorization as a collective investment scheme. The HK definition is quite similar as to how authorisation works in practice which is that, without it, schemes can only be offered to sophisticated investors. The position in Singapore was and is different. Definitional changes were only made in 2017 to remove the concurrent requirements of pooling and external management, which kept land banking schemes outside the regulatory regime. These are not in force yet, which in Singapore means that they can be sold to the public generally (subject to consumer protection laws). Amongst other things to be discussed are how regulatory statutes should be interpreted, whether and how much deference should be given to the views of the regulators, and its ramifications for other areas like cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings