Los Angeles -Another hedge fund lobby group is being formed to ward off heightened regulation, but industry experts acknowledged that attempts to repair fund managers’ image as freewheeling, unregulated risk takers may be futile because large funds are so profitable.
“Obviously what we make is absolutely obscene,” Marc Lasry, founder and managing partner of Avenue Capital Group, said at a panel sponsored by the Milken Institute of former Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond king Michael Milken. “I’m not saying it’s wrong, trust me, but it’s still obscene.”
The new group is being organized by Paul Roth, a partner of New York law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, which represents a number of large hedge funds.
Roth argues that the industry’s main lobbying group, the Managed Futures Association, representing 1,300 members, is too diverse to be effective. He wants to see large funds with more than $10 billion under management distinguished in the public and congressional mind from smaller funds.
