Last week brought a report that since the tossing of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s hedge fund registration rule, firms were in a rush to deregister, which suggested that the chief compliance officers they hired were heading for the door. Executive recruiter David Claypoole of Summit, N.J.-based Parks Legal Placement says it’s not so. In a posting on Opalesque, Claypoole declares, “I am as busy now as I was before” the court decision killing the registration requirement, adding, “I have yet to receive one call from a hedge fund CCO looking to return to an institutional setting.” Rather, he gets calls “almost daily” from compliance professionals trying to get into hedge funds. The demand is still hot, he says, because funds that remain registered must have a CCO and the attendant procedures in place anyway. In addition, writes Claypoole, “A solid compliance program has become part of best practices for hedge funds; not only can it prevent a catastrophic event but compliance has become an essential marketing tool.” Claypoole concludes, “To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the CCO’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”
