NEWS

Cardiff University Professor Laurence Copeland argues in his article (“The EU and the Hedge Funds: the Vendetta Goes On,” Reuters, May 24, 2010) that the “collateral damage” of EU efforts to increase regulation of hedge funds “will threaten every investor, pension fund contributor or life insurance buyer, and ultimately every taxpayer throughout the whole of Europe.”

He notes that, “The inconvenient truth is that, much as commentators and (especially) politicians pointed to the hedge funds as an accident waiting to happen, when the subprime storm actually arrived, its epicentre was in the mainstream banks, not the so-called alternative investment sector. . . . The knee-jerk response of populist politicians to shoot the messenger is deplorably immature.”