Finance Week – A Working Group supported by the major London-listed hedge funds has proposed tighter self-regulation – including fuller disclosure of who owns them, where they have invested their money, what strategies they follow and what their holdings are actually worth. But the planned code would not fully protect against a repeat of recent fund collapses due to high leverage – or enable them to fend off one current accusation, that their short-selling is behind recent financial market downturns.
Hedge funds, currently fighting accusations that their short-selling strategies have driven debt and share prices downwards, will be able to do so with more figures of they sign up to a new codeproposed for the industry. The Hedge Fund Working Group, chaired by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Andrew Large, has called for minimum levels of disclosure, accounting transparency anddetail on strategy, to be policed by an industry regulator. The Group is supported by most of the larger London-based hedge funds, which would finance the new regulatory agency through asubscription.
