Listening to the way John Tiner speaks about hedge funds, it’s no wonder London is surging as a center for alternative investments. Tiner, chairman of the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, told a meeting of the agency that “hedge funds were increasingly a core component of the financial markets and also important to market stability, efficiency and innovation.” Tiner said he favored retail exposure to hedge funds through funds of hedge funds, and pulled back from imposing heavy regulatory burden in order to prevent a hedge fund flight offshore. His comments come only a day after Christopher Cox, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, basically vowed that hedge funds will be regulated, and that he favored raising the minimum investment to at least $1.5 million in order to keep out “unsophisticated investors.” While HF reaction to Cox in the U.S. has been somewhat muted, as regulatory efforts are still up in the air, Tiner says hedge funds and investors and the U.K. have welcomed the FSA’s gentler approach to monitoring the industry.
