Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Bloomberg – HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest bank, is facing lawsuits in Ireland by investors faulting the lender for how it performed as custodian for money lost in Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
A Dublin court may rule tomorrow on whether investors must wait to pursue claims against HSBC until suits by mutual funds that used the bank as a custodian are resolved. Two Irish funds suspended redemptions due to exposure to Madoff.
Custodian banks, especially those serving European Union- regulated funds that are typically low risk, face scrutiny as the European Commission seeks to increase their responsibilities after the Madoff scandal. Investors in Luxembourg and Ireland, Europe’s biggest and third-largest mutual fund markets, have sued custodians, asking courts to break legal ground by ordering them to repay billions of dollars lost in Madoff’s fraud.
WSJ – The Church of England has emerged as an unlikely defender of the hedge-fund industry against the prospect of new regulations from the European Union.
Only last year, the Archbishop of York was calling hedge funds “bank robbers” for profiting from the fall in bank stocks.
Now, a group of six of the U.K.’s largest charitable foundations, including the Church of England, has told a House of Lords committee that a proposed EU directive would “significantly restrict our ability to generate funds to pursue our charitable missions and thus reduce our impact for public good.”
Bloomberg – The European Union’s plan to regulate hedge funds will cost the bloc’s pension industry about 25 billion euros ($36 billion) a year, the Alternative Investment Management Association said.
The proposed law would drive pension funds toward more traditional assets such as equities and bonds or cut the returns on their investments in hedge funds and private equity, London- based AIMA, the largest trade group representing the industry, said in a statement today.
“This is an estimated figure but it shows the potentially enormous impact that the directive could have on Europe’s pension funds and in the longer term, Europe’s pensioners,” AIMA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Baker said in the statement.
The Australian – The move wades the US into a fierce battle between the UK and other parts of Europe over how tough regulation should be. Some nations, led by Germany and France, are calling for wholesale regulation of financial services in the wake of last fall’s crisis, but the UK says that overly stringent rules would damage its large financial sector and close off US and other funds to European investors.
The US and UK are lining up to change the European Union’s proposed Alternative Investment Funds Directive, a sweeping bid to overhaul regulation of hedge funds, private equity and other alternative investment funds.
Reuters UK – A draft European Union law that will require hedge fund managers to be authorised needs refining to cover other types of alternative investments better, a senior MEP said on Tuesday.
The Alternative Investment Fund Managers law is before the European Parliament and EU states for adoption, but is already subject to heated debate.
It covers many types of investments that do not come under the EU’s long-standing mutual funds framework known as UCITS.
Globe and Mail – Paris, so far, has emerged as the most serious challenger. But Mr. Sarkozy may be his own worst enemy on this file. The reason: He and his German allies are wholesale supporters of the European Union effort to rein in the hedge funds even though the funds can take little blame for the financial disaster.
If Mr. Sarkozy gets his way, the funds, which are a huge business in London, won’t jump on the Eurostar and re-emerge in Paris. They will leave the EU entirely for Switzerland (not an EU member; some funds have already moved there) or any of the financially ambitious Middle East and Asian cities – Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Shanghai – which are dangling gold and pearls before the big-name fund managers.
Reuters AlertNet – The newly elected European parliament starts its five-year term on Tuesday in a combative mood which could slow the passage of laws intended to fight Europe’s worst economic crisis in decades. At its first session since an election in June, the assembly will put off for at least two months a vote on reappointing European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, although he is backed by all 27 European Union governments.
New York Times Blogs – The compulsory registration of hedge fund managers was backed by a global regulatory body on Monday in an effort to restore investor confidence.
The International Organization of Securities Commissions, representing regulators from more than 100 countries, said the $1.3 trillion hedge fund sector did not cause the credit crunch but may have amplified its effects.
IOSCO’s final six principles flesh out a statement made in March, and a pledge from the G20 group of industrialized and emerging market countries in April, that all hedge fund managers should be registered and directly supervised, Reuters reported. Those principles include mandatory registration of hedge fund managers while prime brokers who provide funding to hedge funds should also be subject to mandatory registration and supervision.
The European Union has also put forward a draft law that goes further than IOSCO, while the U.S. is also planning mandatory registration of hedge funds but so far in a less extensive way than the EU.
Bloomberg – Buyout firms and hedge funds, “Read my lips: You’re going to have regulation.”
So says Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the Socialist Party president who conducted a two-year campaign for the first European Union regulations governing so-called alternative investors. Hedge funds and private-equity firms, which manage 2 trillion euros ($2.8 trillion) in the region, are in line for some of the world’s strictest rules, and potentially billions of dollars of compliance costs, under an EU measure proposed in April.
Wealth Bulletin – Paul Myners has vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to revise a directive from Brussels that would give the European Union the power to set limits on how much hedge funds are allowed to borrow.
The draft legislation has triggered panic in the industry and prompted several senior figures to threaten to leave London unless the legislation is radically altered.
Myners will meet Sweden’s deputy finance minister in 10 days to seek changes to the directive, as Sweden prepares to take over the EU chair from Czech Republic on July 1.
World Radio Switzerland – Several major hedge funds in London say they’re considering moving abroad, notably to Switzerland. They are angered by a proposition from the European Union that would require more accountability and limit the amount of money they can borrow. Switzerland is an attractive destination because it is easier to register and launch a hedge fund, and subsequent regulation is less constraining. Does that mean this is the wild west for shady financial institutions? No, say the experts. It just means Switzerland has struck a better balance between flexibility and oversight. Lucas Chambers reports for WRS.
Bloomberg – Hedge fund managers who run the largest 15 percent of portfolios in the European Union would have to report risks, debts and trading activities to regulators under a draft proposal to tighten oversight after the financial crisis.
The EU’s executive agency in Brussels is weighing plans to regulate “alternative investment fund managers” who oversee at least 250 million euros ($333 million). The measure also covers private-equity buyout firms.
The proposal answers calls from EU lawmakers for rules on all market actors, and from the Group of 20 nations for oversight of hedge funds large enough to put financial systems at risk. While the proposal, which may still be changed, excludes 85 percent of hedge fund managers, it would leave out 24 percent of their assets in the region, according to the commission.
