Cox: Rules for hedge funds needed
By Sara Hansard
July 25, 2006
Christopher Cox urged "emergency" limits on the marketing and availability of hedge funds to "unsophisticated" retail investors today at a hearing on hedge funds conducted by the Senate Banking Committee.
Mr. Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, outlined a number of emergency actions and proposed regulations that he will call for in the wake of a decision last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals overturning the SEC's 2004 hedge fund adviser registration rule.
-There are an estimated 8,800 hedge funds with $1.2 trillion in assets.
Decades-old regulations governing who can invest in hedge funds may be updated to ensure that only wealthy people may do so, Mr. Cox told the committee.
The current definition of "accredited investors," those who can invest in hedge funds, is "wholly inadequate to protect unsophisticated investors from the complex risks of investment in most hedge funds," said Mr. Cox.
The overturned regulation would have had the effect of increasing the suitability threshold for investors in most hedge funds to $1.5 million of net worth, rather than $1 million.
In addition, Mr. Cox said he will recommend that the SEC issue a new anti-fraud rule that would have the effect of "looking through" a hedge fund to its investors to ensure that hedge fund advisers have a clear fiduciary responsibility to investors in the funds.
Since the court decision, more hedge fund advisers have become newly registered than have de-registered, Mr. Cox said.
He stressed that hedge funds remain subject to antifraud, civil liability and other provisions of the federal securities laws, noting that the number of enforcement cases brought by the SEC has grown from just four in 2001 to more than 90 since then.
"But while our ability to bring enforcement actions against hedge funds and their managers remains intact" following the court decision, "the same can not be said for the commission's ability to require hedge fund advisers to register and submit to inspections," he said.
Hedge fund regulation is inadequate, he said. "We must move quickly to address the gaping hole that the Goldstein decision has left," he said, referring to the court decision
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Gee...You don't think it bothers Goldman, Merrill, Morgan Stanley ect.. that there is 1.2 trillion in assets out of their control????
:eek: