Hedge Funds: Heading for a regulatory hard landing? 

While the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently striving to introduce new regulatory procedures for hedge funds, at the European level the area is just emerging as a policy debate.

According to its Green Paper on Financial Services Policy (2005-2010), the European Commission announced that it does not have plans to push for regulatory initiatives in the area of hedge funds. 

Gottlieb says that given the dynamism of the industry and its current growth in European financial markets, this stance "reflects a fatigue in the field of financial services regulation", but is also attributable to the fact that the European hedge fund industry remains at "a different stage of maturity than its US counterpart".

The author continues by exploring the economic rationale that should be kept in mind for any appropriate policy making in this area and outlines the regulatory uncertainties remaining with binding the hedge fund industry together with MiFID and UCITS regulations.

He concludes by saying that "instead of imposing a UCITS-like, product-focused regulation, regulators will likely agree on a set of pan-European rules that will shift the regulatory burden towards investment managers as will be the case under MiFID".