AIMA BACKS TRANSPARENCY FOR HEDGE FUNDS

Posted February 24, 2009

LONDON – The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), a global hedge fund industry trade association, has begun a transparency initiative under which hedge fund managers would disclose systemically significant positions and risk exposures to their national regulators.

The initiative is part of AIMA’s new platform, which also advocates an aggregated short position disclosure regime to national regulators, support for new policies to reduce settlement failure (including in naked short selling), and a global manager-authorization and supervision template based on the model of the UK’s Financial Services Authority and a call for unified global standards for the industry.

“We want to dispel once and for all this misconception that the hedge fund industry is opaque and uncooperative,” says Andrew Baker, Chief Executive, AIMA. “That’s why we are declaring our support for the principle of full transparency of systemically significant positions and risk exposures by hedge fund managers to their national regulators through a regular reporting framework. We are confident that our members recognize that it is in everyone’s best interests if we cooperate fully in the important on-going international efforts to examine and improve the supervisory framework of the future.”

AIMA’s members manage more than 75 percent of hedge fund assets globally and the association has over 1,200 member firms in 43 countries. Members include leading hedge fund managers, fund of hedge funds managers, prime brokers, legal and accounting firms and fund administrators. The association is representing the global hedge fund industry in on-going international discussions about the future regulatory framework for the industry, notably with the organizations tasked by the G-20 to address the issue, such as IOSCO and the Financial Stability Forum.