Reuters India- Indian hedge funds will grow rapidly despite a hesitant attitude from the country’s regulators, industry participants said on Tuesday, as investors keep piling money into the nascentindustry.
The Indian hedge fund sector is one of the smallest in Asia, partly because tight rules make it hard to set up domestic hedge funds and burden access for foreign players, often forcing them to use cumbersome investment tools.
“The Indian hedge fund industry started later because of a lack of feasible instruments … But the fact that it is small now doesn’t mean it’s going to be small tomorrow,” Peter Douglas at GFIA, a hedge fund research firm, told Reuters.
Hedge funds active in India were meeting at a conference in Geneva, a large financial centre for private banks, which often invest in hedge funds on behalf of their clients.
Indian hedge funds manage some $3 billion in assets, according to GFIA, out of $160 billion in Asian hedge funds, while only 50 out of 800 Asian funds focus on India. Worldwide, hedge funds are estimated to manage up to $2 trillion.
