In the wake of the recent global financial crisis regulators and supervisors
became aware that the ‘risk appetite’ of hedge funds and private equity funds
was to a significant extent shielded from public scrutiny, as it was only
through banks’ financing of these funds that public authorities could obtain a
view on the role of these funds in the wider financial system. In order to
disperse this lack of reliable and comprehensive data, measures were adopted
both in the European Union – the Alternative Investment Management Funds
Directive – and to a lesser extent in the United States to impose a
risk-sensitive framework. Individual EU Member States and other countries
followed suit. This book reprints reports delivered by representatives of
fifteen countries at the Eighteenth International Congress of the
International Academy of Comparative Law, held in Washington on the 29th of
July 2010. The reports present a wealth of information on the different
approaches and the specific rules that a variety of national legislators have
adopted on the regulation of hedge funds and private equity funds. They
greatly clarify the current understanding of such factors as the following:
-
the nature of the systemic risk created by these funds;
-
how activist investors challenge the incumbent management of well-established
companies;
-
effects of aggressive intervention in the business organization of a firm;
-
how some funds achieve excess returns even during the crisis; ;
-
advance information obtained through insider rings or other social networks;
and
safeguards that limit the investor’s risk (e.g., allowing only “funds of
funds”).
With its comparative analysis of rules (and their degree of stringency)
adopted by states on offering these products to the retail investor, this book
is of great importance for legal practice in the areas of investor protection,
financial services, and regulation of securities and banking. Although the
present crisis has fundamentally challenged public authorities in every
country, it is important to know what has been introduced or modified and
which pre-existing measures have been retained as a result of new measures.
The national reports reproduced in this book provide the clearest and fullest
commentary available on this and other aspects of the ‘new’ global financial
regulatory scheme.
List of Contributors. Preface.
Chapter 1 General Report: The Regulation
of Private Equity, Hedge Funds and State Funds
Eddy Wymeersch.
Chapter 2 Belgian Report
Philippe Malherbe.
Chapter 3
Croatia
Edita Čulinović Herc & Mihaela Braut Filipović.
Chapter 4 Denmark
Simon Krogh. Chapter 5 France
Alain
Couret. Chapter 6 France: Taxation of Hedge Funds and Their
Managers
Georges A. Cavalier. Chapter 7 Germany
Holger
Fleischer & Jan Hupka. Chapter 8 Greece
Christos S.
Chrissanthis. Chapter 9 Hungary
Endre Hugó Ferenczy & Mihály
Ormos. Chapter 10 Italy
Raffaele Lener. Chapter 11
Luxembourg
Isabelle Lebbe & Philippe-Emmanuel Partsch. Chapter 12
Poland
Mariola Lemonnier. Chapter 13 Spain
Reyes Palá Laguna.
Chapter 14 Switzerland
Myriam Senn. Chapter 15 Taiwan
Ching-Ping Shao. Chapter 16 United Kingdom
Harry McVea.
Chapter 17 United States
Henry Ordower.
Chapter 18 The
European Alternative Investment Fund Management Directive
Eddy Wymeersch.
Appendix .Directives. Index.
