April 29 marks the one-year anniversary of the European Commission’s publication of its controversial Alternative Investment Fund Managers directive, a proposed piece of far-reaching legislation that could restrict Europe’s access to global alternative asset managers. But instead of allowing their deep ideological rift to show in public, the European Union’s Council of Ministers decided last month to set aside a debate on the proposal.

For their part, U.S. and U.K. politicians are hoping an agreement can be reached with global peers at the G-20 summit in Canada in June. The two countries are concerned about the creeping protectionism of the bill, in which non-EU managers would have to prove “equivalence” of regulatory status with EU managers. Countries including Denmark, France and Germany want the EU to come down hard on the alternatives sector in the wake of the financial crisis.....

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