Weekly AAA Newsreel

20 March 2008

Below is out (shortened) weekly round-up of stories in which you might be interested, but which didn’t graduate to full stories on AllAboutAlpha.com.  As usual, all these stories are listed in the scrolling news ticker you see at the top of your screen.

Lawrence Cohen, a NY lawyer, dives deeper into the legal issues surrounding the Bulldog Investors case.  Says Cohen, “The tension between freedom of speech and non-public offerings may come down to a determination of the meaning of the term ‘offering.’ Some would argue that the availability on a hedge fund’s Web site of a document that can be read by anyone constitutes a ‘public offering,’…”

Is it any wonder hedge funds aren’t clamoring to voluntarily register with the SEC?  Bloomberg reports that the regulator has only just abandoned its efforts to get hedge funds to fill out a 27 page questionnaire.

The European head of investment consulting at Watson Wyatt tells Pensions & Investments that, “We’re only in the early stages, but (alternative beta) is attracting a lot of interest at the moment…Right now, those who are looking at this are the very big clients with a lot of resources. But in time, (alternative beta) should attract the smaller to medium-size funds interested in diversifying away from the equity risk premium.”  

A new study finds that 80% of investment consultants will focus on alternative investments this year - prompting one of its authors to say “We knew alternatives would be important…We did not know the extent to which this would drive flows.”

Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley tell Indian media that “The only way to get a regulatory regime for hedge funds is a huge scandal.” 

After being blamed for sparking the whole sub-prime mess in the first place, it now appears that hedge funds might be “riding to the rescue” of at least one wounded mortgage company.  Similarly ironic are recent reports that several hedge funds cleaned up on Bear’s collapse - a downfall precipitated by the collapse of Bear’s own hedge fund last summer.  Which all goes to show that hedge funds defy blanket characterizations.

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