Part 1 - Ghost-busting frauds of the past: a challenge for new managers
"Hedge funds are less encumbered by government regulation, less
transparent to investors, play more complex games, take bigger
risks, and capture the public imagination in a way that their lesser
counterparts have difficulty approaching. These unique features
have resulted in an increasing scale of losses due to fraud, with
no corresponding increases in safeguards available for investors,"
says Bruce Johnson in his book, The Hedge Fund Fraud Casebook
(Wiley, 2010).
This would mean that emerging managers would be grappling with
the "dark side of hedge funds' secretive world."
This is not really the case anymore, however.
Now investors, regulators and investigators are more vigilant than
ever through more focused due diligence, required registrations
and check-ups; a high level of transparency from managers is the
new black; and new regulations are being implemented all around
to better harness the wild spirits and the bad apples (such as
Dodd-Frank in the U.S. and the AIFMD in the EU). So the risk of
being victim of a hedge fund fraudster is lessening - a little bit.
What does it mean for newcomers?
It is already hard for new hedge funds to raise new capital and to
meet new demands from investors and regulators.
But are frauds of the past haunting their struggling beginnings?
According to most of the experts interviewed by Opalesque, the answer is; not in a bad way. Frauds of the past can be ghostbusted
with more thorough DD (due diligence), better operations
and reputable independent service providers.
When asked, to what extent the amount of financial frauds in the
U.S. is deterring investors from investing in emerging managers
(particularly hedge fund managers), they replied; not as much as
one would think.
The emerging hedge fund manager......................
To view our full article please login
This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.
|