I have looked at this one and think it is interesting. Relatively safe investment that isnāt really correlated to residential or commercial RE, good preferred yield (5%), but your upside is capped at 5%/year + 14% at fund closing. It will depend slightly on how long the fund goes, but you are in the ballpark of a pretty safe 6%/year return, but again your upside is capped. Farmland investments generally do better than 6%/year so itās not great relative to other farmland investments but among GV funds I think its one of the better/only options if you want something on the safer end of the spectrum and donāt want residential or commercial RE.
Hello
I m Indonesian citizen, just starting to learn about GV PT
are there people here already apply GV using funds investment and can share their up/down in the last 3-6 years?
The GV-via-fund alternative hasnāt been around for 3-6 years, therefore the question cannot be answered.
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Thanks Kevin. makes sense.
However, if someone had a higher risk appetite, which funds would you suggest. Given the market cycle and stage that we are in currently (at least globally, not sure about Portugal though), and with a horizon for next 5-7 years, i am not able find promising funds that qualify for GV and have a reputable track record with an experienced fund manager. Do let me know otherwise. IMGA Acoes portugal may be an option given we now have an approvalā¦ but other than most funds seem to Real estate /commercial property or way too risk i.e. startups etc.
That pretty much describes the situation. One can argue that it is difficult for it to be otherwise. The Portuguese economy is not that big. It doesnāt have a lot of capacity for incoming capital. The Portuguese stock market has not been around all that long. CMVM only dates to 1999. The entire economy didnāt exist before the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Most of the economy that does exist rates at about the level of $5-50mm companies. The funds that do exist are $10-50mm in size typically. Think about it. You as a EUR350k investor represent a fairly significant catch in this market.
Major fund managers do not operate in .pt because there isnāt enough capacity to make it worth their while. The Portuguese listed market capitalization simply isnāt big enough to absorb much capital. The only market big enough isā¦ real estate. And some are concerned GV is doing a fairly good job of distorting even that. (Whether thatās true is a topic for debate, but clearly .pt.gov thinks so, given rule changes.)
The perspective you need to have is that itās not really all that long ago that Portugal was, in scope, scale and practice, a third world economy. Thatās not meant as an insult to the country - theyāve made fantastic progress since joining the EU - itās just reality.
One can argue that is the entire point of GV, to entice risk capital into the country by offering a significant non-monetary reward, because market-beta monetary rewards at the ānormalā risk levels arenāt there.
I keep reading posts here from people hoping for this to be different. It keeps not being different. Maybe in 5-10 years.
For what you describe, the closest youāll get I think is the Explorer IV fund. The managers have a 10yr track record. C2 has the track record generally but the sub-managers of whatās on offer does not. The other large players in the market such as Indico or Oxy are as noted elsewhere running startup or real-estate-derivative funds. Thereās IMO a reason.
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Jeff, Thanks for the detailed note. Happy to know that i am not totally crazy now 
FWIW, one of the lawyers (Dini Lucas) I have been interviewing was of the opinion that it has to be ONE fund, and that the SEF regulation somehow actually stipulates one fund and doing more than one can put your application at risk.
I would like to see the basis for this opinion. Here i quoting from SEF website:
[Any person]ā¦may apply for a Residence Permit for Investment, by one of the following routes: ā¦Capital transfer of the amount of 350 thousand Euros, or higher, for the acquisition of units of investment funds or venture capital fund of funds" (emphasis added)
Interesting - it is possible they just wanted to do less work and therefore were guiding me towards not investing in multiple funds.
I think that there are gray areas that are left up to the discretion of individual immigration agents. Your lawyer may be offering guidance that is intended to minimize potential complications.
That seem the more likely option, although as I understand the process the āextra workā would mainly be on the part of the bank holding the investments because I believe they are the ones who provide the statement attesting that you have made the required investment.
Also, almost all the investment funds have minimums of less than 350K. If you had to invest in only one fund, none of the funds would have lower minimums.
A lot of the funds are quite happy to accept non-GV investors. Indeed some are non-GV funds in which the managers have simply made necessary modifications to allow the fund to qualify for GV. So the minimums being set lower doesnāt really say anything. Originally a lot of the clearly-GV-targeted funds had 350k minimums.
The advice here has evolved considerably over time. In the beginning, everyoneās advice was One Fund Only. It took a few people to attempt a split fund and succeed before it became more common. I would simply expect that there are lawyers who simply arenāt up on the latest, or just ultra-conservative.
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FYI. Fund advisor OptylonKrea is introducing Prima Capital Fund, undeniably the most creative Golden Visa investment product on the Portuguese market, combining the cost/management efficiency of Fund investment with the stability and security of a Real Estate investment.
Their words not mineā¦ But this advisor has a lot of experience with GV. MIght be worth a peek. They are hosting a seminar August 3 so reach out to Safak at Opylon if interested.
BTW - maybe they read this forum. I posted about some similar idea a few months ago.
Is this the same Prima fund mentioned here back in April?
Beware though, for US taxpayers, OptylonKrea was the one that told investors that they are not reponsible for issuing the PFIC statement.
I dont know for sure if its the same. My recollection is that they paused that fund and probably re-worked it and relaunched. Just a guess.
Hi all, Iām new here, so please go easy on me. I have read quite a few posts, but wasnāt able to get through the hundreds (or thousands) of posts in this particular section.
One simple question I had related to investment funds in general vs real estate.
What happens if a fund cannot raise enough capital and if someone needs to maintain the investment to maintain the GV, you could end up with a situation that the fund closes (even if there is a stock market crash) and then funds are returned and no investment.
Someone pointed out the following to me:
āMost of these funds have been established simply for the purposes of the Golden Visa and, as they donāt require any initial investment, over 20 funds have popped up over the last two years (there were only 66 people that applied through this route between January 2020 and July 2021, spread across more than 20 funds). With new changes at the end of this year, the minimum investment requirement for funds will increase from ā¬350,000 to ā¬500,000 which will essentially kill all demand for this option; as most funds require a minimum subscription rate before they become viable, investing in a fund that doesnāt become fully subscribed will unfortunately result in many people being left holding the bag.ā
Has anyone considered this before?
There are some good points about funds losing attraction because of the increase in the investment amount, and if the numbers are already low, could that be a risk on its own?
Any helps, tips or even links to other discussions where this has been covered will be much appreciated.
Cheers
Hi,
Do you have more talks with EQTY Capital fund?
Their Fact sheet is more promising than othersā¦
This topic has been covered before in this thread. Yes, there are 800+ posts; it takes a lot of posts to cover all of the topics. And readers should be aware that while the thread label is āfund comparisonā itās just as much a general treatise on the pros/cons/issues around private-equity/VC investing as a comparison/discussion of the pros/cons of individual funds.
And yes, this is a risk. This happened with the original C2 Blackbull fund - it didnāt raise enough capital. There are ways for the fund manager to deal with it; in the case, they rolled it into the MedCap fund. As long as the fund manager doesnāt actually give the money back, youāre fine; itās perfectly legal to change funds, as long as the replacement funds continue to meet the requirement. Itās just something you have to discuss with the fund manager.
If a fund completely blows up, you simply have shares that are worthless. Thatās not the same thing. Your lawyer can make the case to SEF that you made the investment and didnāt sell it and therefore you met the conditions - just in a more expensive way than most people. :I
As to funds becoming less attractive - real estate as well is becoming more restricted; if you say you cannot use 500k to buy that cute pied-a-terre in Lisbon and you have to somehow manage to spend 500k on a house in Sao Pedro do Sul (not an exactly cosmopolitan place), you might feel differently about funds. (I have not looked closely at the real estate rule changes, so I donāt know whatās still allowed, but suffice to say itās cutting out the most-desired options). In any case, I would question the assertion that the changes will ākill all demandā. shrug
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