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Munster Times – Investigators may get a clue Wednesday into how much money might be available for victims in the Bernard Madoff scandal.
The fallen investment guru is scheduled to submit a list of his personal assets to the Securities and Exchange Commission by the end of the year, including property that could be tapped to make restitution to victims of what authorities say was a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
In a previous court hearing, Madoff also agreed to provide the names and locations of entities, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, investments or assets held by his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Evening Standard – Veterans of the secretive $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion) industry say the $50 billion Madoff fraud could bring about sweeping changes in the way the authorities monitor activity.
"This is an Enron moment for hedge funds," said Peter Rup, chief investment officer at New York hedge fund Orion Capital Management. "Regulation would be welcome, primarily from a trust standpoint."
Enron, once the world’s largest energy-trading firm, collapsed in 2001 amid allegations of accounting fraud. Less than a year later, US lawmakers passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which set tighter corporate accountability rules for publicly traded companies.
Suggestions for rule changes for hedge funds include strengthening whistleblower programmes and imposing capital requirements similar to those for mutual funds. Rup and others argue this would restore confidence in the market.
Times Online- The hedge fund industry’s lobby group mounted a last-ditch attempt yesterday to persuade the City regulator to delay its controversial rules on short-selling, which are due to come into force tomorrow.
The Alternative Investment Management Association sent a letter to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) asking for more time for its members to prepare for the changes.
The association’s call was backed by Andrew Shrimpton, the former head of hedge fund regulation at the FSA. He said that the regulator should wait “until next Wednesday, at the earliest” to give the funds sufficient breathing space. “The FSA is skating on thin ice, using emergency powers to bring in these requirements, and is vulnerable to a legal challenge,” Mr Shrimpton said. “It should try to generate some goodwill with the industry by showing it can listen and back down in light of what it hears.”
