Times Online -Brevan Howard, the hedge fund manager, is poised to float a new permanent capital vehicle in London, pitting the City against Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
BH, which manages $11 billion (\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a35.7 billion), is planning the flotation of a new fund along the lines of MW TOPS, which was listed in Amsterdam by Marshall Wace, a rival British hedge fund group, in December.<\/p>\n
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is in the process of relaxing rules to allow single-strategy hedge funds to float in London. BH is said to want to raise between \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c2\u00ac500 million and \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c2\u00ac1 billion (\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a3670 million).<\/p>\n
The move will be a coup for the London Stock Exchange after it lost out to its European rivals last year because of its ban on listed specialist hedge funds. Marshall Wace\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s listing on Euronext Amsterdam last month was the largest ever for a single fund, raising \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c2\u00ac1.5 billion for MW TOPS. It came after Sir Andrew Large, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and its chairman, attacked the FSA\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s restrictions as anachronistic.<\/p>\n
Single-strategy hedge funds \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as distinct from funds of hedge funds \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had been banned from full listings in London because they were not sufficiently diversified and because of restrictions on short-selling.<\/p>\n