AIMA

22 June 2009

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

Andrew Baker, AIMA CEO, said, “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.

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.

Finally, we are pleased that IOSCO have recognised that many of the observations contained in the report may also be applicable to other market participants and that hedge fund managers are already subject to registration/authorisation and on-going supervision/monitoring in most major jurisdictions so it is incorrect to describe the sector as ‘unregulated’.

A few notes of caution, however. 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.”

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For media enquiries, please contact Christen Thomson, AIMA Director of Communications, on +44 (0)2078228380; email – cthomson@aima.org

Editors’ Notes:

About AIMA
As the only truly representative global hedge fund association, AIMA, the Alternative Investment Management Association, has more than 1,100 corporate members worldwide, based in 40 countries.

Members include leading hedge fund managers, fund of hedge funds managers, prime brokers, legal and accounting firms and fund administrators.  They all benefit from AIMA’s active influence in policy development, its leadership in industry initiatives, including education and sound practice manuals and its excellent reputation with regulators worldwide.

AIMA is a dynamic organisation that reflects its members’ interests and provides them with a vibrant global network. AIMA is committed to developing industry skills and education standards and is a co-founder of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation (CAIA) – the industry’s first and only specialised educational standard for alternative investment specialists. For further information, please visit AIMA’s website, www.aima.org.

 

 

 

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