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Legal Notice

The information provided under this section is reserved for professional investors domiciled in Germany.

The following qualify as professional investors:

I. Categories of client who are considered to be professionals:

  1. Entities which are required to be authorised or regulated to operate in the financial markets:

    a. Credit institutions

    b. Investment firms

    c. Other authorised or regulated financial institutions

    d. Insurance companies

    e. Collective investment schemes and management companies of such schemes

    f. Pension funds and management companies of such funds

    g. Commodity and commodity derivatives dealers

    h. Locals

    i. Other institutional investors

  2. Large undertakings meeting two of the following size requirements on a company basis:

    a. balance sheet total: EUR 20 000 000

    b. net turnover: EUR 40 000 000

    c. own funds: EUR 2 000 000

  3. National and regional governments, public bodies that manage public debt, Central Banks, international and supranational institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the ECB, the EIB and other similar international organisations.
  4. Other institutional investors whose main activity is to invest in financial instruments.

Clients who may be treated as professionals on request

  1. Identification criteria

    Clients other than those mentioned in section I, including public sector bodies and private individual investors, may also be allowed to waive some of the protections afforded by the conduct of business rules. Investment firms should therefore be allowed to treat any of the above clients as professionals provided the relevant criteria and procedure mentioned below are fulfilled. These clients should not, however, be presumed to possess market knowledge and experience comparable to that of the categories listed in section I.

    Any such waiver of the protection afforded by the standard conduct of business regime shall be considered valid only if an adequate assessment of the expertise, experience and knowledge of the client, undertaken by the investment firm, gives reasonable assurance, in light of the nature of the transactions or services envisaged, that the client is capable of making his own investment decisions and understanding the risks involved. The fitness test applied to managers and directors of entities licensed under Directives in the financial field could be regarded as an example of the assessment of expertise and knowledge. In the case of small entities, the person subject to the above assessment should be the person authorised to carry out transactions on behalf of the entity. In the course of the above assessment, as a minimum, two of the following criteria should be satisfied:

    • the client has carried out transactions, in significant size, on the relevant market at an average frequency of 10 per quarter over the previous four quarters;
    • the size of the client’s financial instrument portfolio, defined as including cash deposits and financial instruments exceeds EUR 500,000;
    • the client works or has worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position, which requires knowledge of the transactions or services envisaged.

A CLIENT NOT FALLING UNDER THE ABOVE CRITERIA IS CONSIDERED NON PROFESSIONAL.