We may have just lived through the biggest financial crisis in 80 years, but its impact may still not have been big enough for people to learn the right lessons for next time.

Philip Wood, special global counsel at Allen & Overy, told today's Reuters Restructuring Summit in London's Canary Wharf that the effects on the Western world's populace of the credit crisis, while large, have simply not reached the proportions of 80 years ago.

"Do people remember (the lessons from a crisis)? Sometimes they do."

It took 140 years for the British to get over the South Sea Bubble of 1720 and introduce the Companies Act in 1862, he said.

"German inflation of the 1920s still casts a shadow over the German folk memory," he added.

"(But) I'm not too sure people will remember much about this one. Apart from a few unpopular people losing their jobs, it's not hit the population in the same way the Great Depression has, where people were hungry... it was catastrophic.

"We've lost a year's GDP, but for most people it's been a remote, silent whirlwind."

   Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital was a big backer of Moscow’s ambition to become a major emerging-markets financial centre, a bridge between European and Asian capital, a rival to Dubai.

    It not only trumpeted the idea, but was one of the first big local firms to take out offices in a sleek glass skyscraper by the Moscow River, surrounded by foundation pits and towers of naked steel girders that were to become Moscow’s Canary Wharf.

It's hard enough for fund firms to get investors to put money into markets when stocks are so volatile, but it seems they're also still having to wrestle with the bad publicity from U.S. financier Bernard Madoff's giant fraud.

Ashraf Mohamed, portfolio manager and head of Islamic funds at investment firm Stanlib in South Africa, told the London leg of the Reuters Islamic Banking and Finance Summit that investors are still nervous of another Madoff.

"All they are doing right now is saying we want to make sure there isn't any risk. One comment is 'let's make sure we don't have another Bernie Madoff situation'," Mohamed said.

However, he doesn't seem too worried about a repeat of the massive Ponzi scheme.

"My take is that it's all hit the fan," he said. "You don't need to concern yourself with assets being inflated (or) with people trying to deceive you because that's come and gone."

By Lorraine Turner

Speakers at the Reuters Hedge Fund and Private Equity summit this week were asked "what keeps you awake at night" and the answers were wide-ranging, from "my 7-week old daughter" to "the next meteorite".

Some executives are left counting sheep over the heavyweight questions that are plaguing our economies such as how low investment markets will fall or how the credit crisis can be eased as businesses remain stymied by a lack of credit.

Others are more entrenched in more specific fears such as cashflow from investors, a regulatory clamp-down or the fear of bankruptcy amongst private equity-owned companies.

Hedge fund bosses were noticeably cooler about the economic climate but still lie awake at night in a cold sweat over bad investment calls.

Meanwhile one poor private equity house boss confessed that he simply didn't wake at night. "I'm working much too hard for that and by the time I put my head on the pillow I'm totally wiped out." We all know that feeling.

Giampaolo was speaking today at the London leg of the Reuters Hedge Fund and Private Equity Summit.

McLean was speaking today at London leg of the Reuters Hedge Fund and Private Equity Summit.

It is not often that Reuters journalists carefully take down the words of an investor who regularly consults an astrologer, but then not every investor recorded a 32 percent increase in his portfolio in 2008.

As head of Eclectica Asset Management, Hugh Hendry cuts a figure not often seen in modern-day financial investing: a besuited Malcolm McLaren-esque counter-culture figure rather than a pointy-headed quant analyst.

Hendry says he draws direct inspiration from hedge fund managers from yesteryear, making money on the far fringes of the market, rather than today’s hedge fund professionals wedded to the big bastions of the financial industry.

“I have always identified with the spirit of the hedge funds of the 1970s. They were always these fascinating people who you wanted to hang out with, but always regretted not giving them more money,” Hendry said.

“But you couldn’t quite give them a lot of your money because they were too interesting, too edgy -- that’s why you call it alternative,” he said.

A charismatic figure, his astrologer thinks he will be the prophet of the next century, but then, says Hendry, that is because his astrologer is mad.

Certainly his views are controversial -- hedge funds that lock in investors are “evil”, he reckons -- but Hendry says his approach is to be playful, so as to better keep his ideas fresh in a “mad world”.

And maybe he’s right to speak with that astrologer. Hendry is a Pisces, you see, the star sign symbolised by two fishes swimming in opposite directions.

According to Psychicsconnect.com, if you are born under the sign of Pisces: “You are pulled many ways by the currents of life and it can be a struggle for you to swim upstream. However if you do, your intuition can take you far.”

Hendry's intuition has brought him hundreds of millions in assets under management, but his unusual alternative approach did not stop many investors joining the industry-wide redemption rout, pulling out funds last year because they were unwilling to stick with his gut.

"We made the mistake of making money last year, and for that we brought on their wrath," said Hendry with a smile.

There's no shortage of ill will towards bankers at the moment.

But some executives in the private equity and hedge funds industries feel they are getting beaten with the same stick by politicians and the public, despite feeling relatively blameless in this crisis.

BC Partners managing partner Andrew Newington, speaking at the Reuters Hedge Fund & Private Equity Summit in London today, explained.

"There is clearly no political goodwill towards financial services in general and everyone within financial services is being lumped into the same bucket," he said.

"So whether you're an investment bank, whether you're Fred Goodwin, whether you're a private equity firm or hedge fund, it doesn't matter, you appear on a placard at Canary Wharf with a noose around your neck, which isn't a very pleasant prospect."

The once-booming hedge fund industry has shrunk rapidly over the past 9 months to roughly $1-$1.4 trillion, as investors have pulled out their cash following some pretty lacklustre returns.

However, according to Mark Kary, chief executive of Polar Capital, the industry never really deserved to have grown to the best part of $3 trillion in the first place.

He told today's Reuters Hedge Fund and Private Equity Summit in London that while hedge funds had become a "fashion item" in the good times, when it comes down to it there simply isn't enough talent to support an industry of $3 trillion.

    "This went from a $400 billion business to a $3 trillion business in the space of seven years and I just don't think there's enough talent around to be able to do that," he said.

"The idea that you can have 10,000 hedge funds all with a short book, all with a long book, all risk managing and all doing it supremely well is ... absolute nonsense. It's a skill set that only a very small number of people can execute properly."

Some managers, such as John Paulson or Hugh Hendry, have performed very well through the crisis, but they are in the minority.

For many in the industry, who set up when times were good and then rode a rising time in all markets, it seems Kary is onto something.