guardian.co.uk – Investment companies and private equity firms suspect that they have been caught up in a directive whose real aim was hedge funds largely because it is so difficult to define hedge funds.
The Group of 20 leading world economies agreed in April that hedge funds above a certain size should be subject to authorisation and required to report data to supervisors as part of a broader extension of financial regulation in response to the global financial crisis.
But hedge fund managers believe the EU directive is so unclear and badly drafted that it would be dangerous to stick around to find out exactly what it means. The most worrying aspect of the directive is that it would allow regulators to limit the amount of leverage assumed by hedge funds.
