Christopher Miller, Chief Executive Officer
Allenbridge HedgeInfo
September 2009
Let us be clear: we do not genuinely expect our brainstorming laid out here to be taken up any time soon. The wide-ranging nature of the proposals make them hard to implement quickly anyway. But more importantly, there are too many vested interests to bog them down, and we are too politically naive to have left much room for horse-trading.
In principle, we believe strongly that the right regulation will strengthen the hedge fund industry and increase security for investors. But the directive is not really moving even in the right direction and at best, we expect a watered-down version that at least saves some face to be introduced possibly as early as during the Swedish EU Presidency.
We do not wish to dwell on why we have such unsatisfactory proposals any more than is strictly necessary. But in defining objectives, we attempt to analyse some of the unspoken objectives that may have driven the debate thus far. And if this helps us achieve some of the more reasonable unspoken objectives in some other way, then we have a more workable solution.
Any solution that punishes innocent hedge funds and ignores the behaviour of Porsche and SocGen, as well as excluding family offices and sovereign wealth funds, is unfair and unreasonable. So we propose a wide-ranging regime that is more transparent, proportionate and flexible.
The clandestine and inconsistent process, followed by the EC in formulation of the draft directive highlighting the lack of public forum for debate, may have damaged the reputation of the European project and played into the hands of Eurosceptics, making the Irish vote somewhat less certain than before.
As they say, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so why not take this opportunity to reform the legislative process in the European Commission so there is real transparency, democracy, debate and accountability?
