Hedge fund regulation, market discipline and the Hedge Fund Working Group

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• Against a general background of suspicion, criticismand even hostility, the recently formed Hedge Fund Working Group(HFWG), comprising 14 leading fund managers based mainly inthe United Kingdom, published their Final Report in January2008.
• The Report is based on standards of best practice (the‘Standards’ of which there are 28) that are, inthe final analysis, to be administered by a newly establishedHedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB)—a self-regulatory bodycharged with the responsibility of keeping the Standards up-to-dateand ‘fit for purpose’.
• Borrowing from both theFinancial Services Authority's Principles for Business, whichrepresent bold statements of good business practice within theUK's financial services sector, and the Combined Code on CorporateGovernance's voluntary approach of ‘comply or explain’,the Standards are heralded by the HFWG as ‘an exercisein market discipline, based on disclosure’.
• The unprecedentednature of recent financial market . . . [Full Text of this Article]