The Fund Rulebook (FUNDS) — Abu Dhabi Global Market (FSRA)

The FUNDS rulebook is the FSRA's operating manual for funds in ADGM: it takes the fund framework set by the Financial Services and Markets Regulations (FSMR) and fills in the detail — the Domestic/Foreign split, the three fund tiers, and the conduct, investment and disclosure rules each tier must follow. The structuring decision it forces is the tier: a Public Fund (retail, most intensively regulated), an Exempt Fund or a Qualified Investor Fund (professional-only, least regulated). A Domestic Fund must be established or domiciled in ADGM and run by an authorised Fund Manager; everything else — spread-of-risk limits, borrowing, valuation, REIT and private-credit-fund rules — flows from the tier you sit in. It is ADGM's counterpart to the DIFC Collective Investment Law across the UAE's two financial free zones.

Scope and the core mechanism

The rulebook works tier-first. Chapter 3 sorts every fund: Domestic vs Foreign, then Public / Exempt / Qualified Investor Fund, "listed in terms of the level of regulation from most intensively regulated to least". The lighter tiers (Exempt, QIF) trade retail access for far fewer rules — the classic professional-fund bargain. On top of the tier sit the operative chapters: investment and borrowing requirements (e.g. the Public-Fund spread-of-risk rule at 13.4.2), valuation and pricing, oversight and the specialist regimes (REITs, private credit funds). The full rule-by-rule text is searchable clause-by-clause through the regulation graph and ask-the-law.

The gotcha: the tier is the whole game — pick QIF or Exempt and most of the Public-Fund rulebook simply does not apply to you, but you lose retail distribution. Decide the investor base before anything else, because it fixes the tier, which fixes the rules.