Grant this much to German Chancellor Angela Merkel: She is persistent, especially when it comes to hedge funds.
Merkel, forced to drop her more ambitious plans for international regulation in the face of American and British opposition, achieved an agreement to seek greater “vigilance” at a summit of G7 leaders last month, but now hopes to turn that into something more concrete. According to the German magazine Capital, Merkel will propose regular meetings between the G8 regulators and the world’s 20 largest hedge funds at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June.
“She has proposed this plan in the framework of Germany’s G8 presidency and hopes to get the agreement for it at the global economic summit,” the magazine reports, according to Reuters. “The roundtable should meet regularly and serve the confidential exchange of information, to thwart crises in global financial markets.”
At their meeting last month, G7 finance ministers commissioned a report on the hedge fund industry.
Gabriel KurlandBy Gabriel Kurland: On November 12, 2009, the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”), an independent government department that investigates and prosecutes fraud and corruption cases, announced that it is probing the London-based, Dynamic Decisions Capital Management Ltd., after the matter was referred to it by the Financial Services Authority. More...
Ireland has launched the EUR 26 million ($40 million) Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund to invest in startup and early stage companies. More...