INREV forms Brexit Focus Group

In response to the 23 June 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, INREV has created a Brexit Focus Group.

Led by Jeff Rupp, Director of Public Affairs, the group comprises the chairs of the INREV Public Affairs, Tax and Research committees, along with other members of these committees and the Secondary Markets & Liquidity committee.

The Focus Group has been asked to identify the key areas where Brexit poses challenges to the non-listed real estate investment industry in general and to INREV members in particular. The group will explore how INREV can best help to meet these challenges across the whole range of product and service offerings.

To ensure the group’s ideas are also integrated with INREV training and events, Hedda Hollander and Manuela D’Agata, INREV’s Events Manager and Training and Education Manager, have also been included in the group.

As a first step, the Focus Group prepared a statement entitled Guiding Principles for Future EU-UK Relations: the non-listed real estate investment perspective. Available on the INREV website, this statement focuses on high-level concerns that the group would like to see integrated in both sides’ policy positions and negotiating strategies regarding transitional arrangements and the agreements ultimately to be reached in the negotiations between the UK and the remaining 27 EU member states.

These high-level principles are designed to protect the non-listed real estate investment industry from unnecessary negative impacts from Brexit, and include avoiding new barriers, maintaining market access, protecting legitimate expectations and rights acquired, agreeing to transition periods and grandfathering provisions, maintaining the momentum on existing initiatives, and ensuring a transparent and open process.

INREV is working closely with other real estate industry associations as well as private equity and venture capital bodies to ensure as much alignment and information sharing as possible within the real estate investment industry and other ‘alternative’ asset classes, as the negotiations move forward.

In the months ahead, the Brexit Focus Group will seek continuing input from INREV members in identifying the major challenges presented by Brexit and how they would like to see them addressed in INREV research, events, training and public affairs and tax products. At the same time, it will work to ensure that policy makers on both sides of the negotiating table consider our industry’s views as they move forward.

JEFF RUPP
Director of Public Affairs, INREV
jeff.rupp@inrev.org
+32 (0)22 138 161