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Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London:

Opalesque is still tracking a part of the hedge fund world that is seriously considering leaving - or that has already done so - the freewheeling hedge fund jungle for the gentler pastures of UCITS's mutual fund-like regime. Actually, to be more exact, a lot of fund managers are keeping a foot in both camps by opening a UCITS version of their offshore fund - a clone with a different cloak, and a more reassuring one too.

Indeed, UCITS is an extra string to fund managers' bow rather than a replacement, said Michael Barr, partner at Irish law firm A&L Goodbody in a presentation in London this week.

Some of the companies that have launched UCITS III hedge fund clones include Gartmore, BlueCrest, Brevan Howard, Cheyne Capital, GLG, Marshall Wace, Millennium Global, Odey, RWC, York Capital Management – the latter being a non-European manager.

The UCITS III directive was passed in 2002, but the first 'full-spectrum' UCITS III funds were not launched until a year later, by long-only asset managers who marketed them as money-market Plus funds, according to S&P. BlackRock then launched a fund, and everyone in the UK took notice: Cazenove, Insight, Gartmore, Polar followed suite. Then in 2007 came the first explicit port of an offshore hedge fund to UCITS III, from Cazenove.

The UCITS regime "could be one of the most positive thing to come out of the EU," said Peter O'Dwyer......................

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