Starving out the locusts

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On the regulatory side the guys from AIMA seem to be unstoppable, first they published the HedgeFund Matrix, now the new AIMA website went live and they also issued the latest capital adequacy guidance to UK hedge fund managers (see press release). Great job and very useful stuff.

Some managers in Hong Kong should have had a closer look at AIMA's best practice guidelines - it might have avoided them being rebuked by the Honk Kong SFC.

A little further west, the FSA (!) said that there is no need for more hedge fund regulation. CEO Hector Sants stated "Hedge fund managers in general are weathering the market turmoil pretty well in the circumstances, certainly versus other components of the financial services industry". Is this the confession that the unregulated industry did far better than the regulated one? Perhaps in the UK the regulator finally got it right.

However, there is always Germany: according to the FT Deutschland the German socialist party wants to tax private equity funds. Hedge funds should according to the SPD only be able to act in Germany when registered in an EU country and should disclose their ownership and asset structure. The party also wants to prevent insurance companies and pensions funds to invest in hedge funds. For them the solution to the financial crisis seems to be to starve out what they call "locusts". However, Germans saving for theîr pensions might think that someone else should be dubbed locusts.

http://www.hedgefund-lawyer.com/