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23 Jun 2009

Principles For Hedge Fund Regulation Welcomed By AIMA

Global hedge fund industry group, The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), has welcomed the principles for hedge fund regulation published by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) today.

“We are very happy to welcome the publication of this report today because AIMA has already announced its support for several of the high level principles mentioned in it." Andrew Baker, AIMA CEO, said, “In our new policy platform of 24th February, we said that we supported global registration for managers and we are glad that IOSCO has also come out in favour of this.

“We also expressed our support for the reporting of systemically relevant information by managers of large hedge funds to their national regulators, and this is another one of IOSCO’s key principles.

“We are also delighted that IOSCO refers to the ‘development, implementation and convergence of industry good practices’ because AIMA has been extremely active in this area and is continuing a great deal of work on it with the other groups involved. We are following up on a G20 action point in this respect," he continued.

In a note of caution, however, Baker said, "We would stress that it is hedge fund managers, rather than the funds themselves, that should registered. It is also mentioned that hedge funds use derivatives for speculative purposes without stating that exchange-traded and over-the-counter derivatives are principally used by the relevant market participants for risk management purposes."

“Finally, we are concerned that these recommendations may lead regulators to seek quantity rather than quality of data. It is important that regulators have the expertise and resources to deal with the data they receive.”

AIMA has more than 1,100 corporate members worldwide, based in 40 countries, including hedge fund managers, fund of hedge funds managers, prime brokers, legal and accounting firms and fund administrators.

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