Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
from Funds Hub:
UCITS IV Everyone
It is early days at the Reuters fund summit in Luxembourg, but already a few themes are building. For one thing, no one seems to be too negative about the investment climate.
For the most part, however, the attendees are focused on how the industry will recuperate from the battering it has suffered during the financial crisis. Again, there appears to be a degree of optimism. Most of the talk is about UCITS IV, which is fundspeak for a new kind of pan-European fund that is easier to distribute.
Essentially, it a) allows fund managers to register a fund in one place and have it listed across Europe and b) allows for smaller, local funds to be fed into it.
The big hope is that this will both build the industry and save money at the same time. Hence the optimism.
It does little, however, to address the underlying problem facing fund managers -- to get distrusting retail investors back into a market that many are still afraid of.
from Global Investing:
Reuters Funds Summit: Madoff, the silent presence
Master-fraudster Bernie Madoff is the invisible guest at an annual fund fest in Luxembourg, the European capital for fund administration.
Even though the former Nasdaq chairman is under arrest thousands of miles away from this discreet financial centre nestled between Belgium, France and Germany, his presence was omnipresent. Fund managers just can't stop mentioning him.
One example: "The hedge fund bubble has popped. The market bubble has popped, and to put a cherry on the top you had the Madoff probe in December," said Ken Kinsley-Quick from hedge fund Thames River Capital.
Other speakers have gone into deep soul-searching, accepting that more transparency and due diligence is needed. But few would openly beat their chest and admit any wrongdoing as they all seemed to agree that if the Securities and Exchange Commission could not catch Madoff's wrong doing over 20 years, no-one could.
"Except for a few whistle blowers no-one had expected anything. I really do not think that custodians did not take their role seriously. But it's not helping the industry," Yves Francis, a partner from Deloitte said.
Even Luxembourg's budget minister, Luc Frieden, got into the act, suggesting that a deal should be made out of court to compensate Madoff investors who had gone through Luxembourg-based investment vehicles.
He clearly wanted Madoff to just go away.
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.
