Summit Notebook

from Funds Hub:

Reuters Fund Summit: Will hedge fund regulation open the door to retail investors?

 

By Huw Jones

 

Hedge funds are nothing if not optimistic – they have to be in the current climate.

 

 

While holed up in an English country resort last weekend, finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 group of countries agreed that the $1.4 trillion hedge funds sector should be made to register, be directly supervised and provide information about their holdings to regulators who track risk in markets.

 

And the European Commission, which drafts financial rules applied across the European Union, said later it will come forward with a draft law on April 21 for the sector.

 

The industry has long expected more regulation and is already beavering away in the background to come up with globally agreed standards in a bid to avoid aggressive regulation.