Church of England gives surprise blessing to hedge funds

Much-maligned hedge funds have found an unlikely defender in the form of the Church of England, which expressed its concerns Wednesday at a proposed new EU directive to regulate the industry. The Church Commissioners, the Church's investment arm, joined five other leading British charitable foundations to warn of "serious consequences" from the measure in a letter to the upper house of the British parliament.

"We are concerned that the directive as currently drafted will significantly restrict our ability to generate funds to pursue our charitable missions and thus reduce our impact for public good," said the letter. "The directive as currently drafted will severely restrict our access both to non-EU funds and to non-EU fund managers. This will impact access to private equity funds and to hedge funds," it added.

It points out that up to 95 percent of global hedge funds are currently either not domiciled in the EU or have non-EU managers. The Church Commissioners said they feared that the legislation would lead to "a significant risk that many of the best (funds) will stop raising capital in Europe rather than attempting to comply with onerous EU regulations".

http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/britain-finance.ul/

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Church of England gives surprise blessing to hedge funds

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