A newly established working group set up to make France’s asset management industry more attractive to foreign investors has outlined a series of steps to reach the goal.

France’s Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the French asset management association – the Association Française de la Gestion Financière (AFG) – set up the working group earlier this year, calling it FROG as an acronym for “French Routes and Opportunities Garden”.

FROG has now produced a report on the outcome of its deliberations including seven concrete measures.

These seven steps will help the industry to compete on an international level by letting investors choose fund subscription and redemption solutions from a comprehensive catalogue, and giving them access to SICAVs (open-ended investment companies) that have opted to comply with a governance charter, the AMF and the AFG said.

The measures would also give asset managers the ability to improve their management fee disclosure, as well as to decide on whether to use the AMF’s fund classification, which has now been made optional.

Other measures would allow management firms to use a wider range of liquidity management tools to manage their investment strategies in the best way, and make use of new pre-marketing possibilities, the organisations said.

The AMF and the AFG also said FROG would institute an annual meeting to make sure the initiative continued developing.

They named Jean-Louis Laurens as ambassador for the French asset management industry to promote the sector’s strengths within professional bodies and to major international investors.

Laurens has been managing partner and chairman of the management committee of Rothschild & Cie Gestion since 2009, and headed up Robeco’s French subsidiaries from from 2005 to 2009.

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