Adventures In Hyberbole: European Hedge Fund Exodus Edition

Date: Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Author: Dealbreaker

It’s been made perfectly clear by everyone with something to lose from Europe’s ever-changing-but-still-draconian hedge fund regulation proposals that they’ll be a disaster. Hedge funds will leave in droves, London will be left a ghost town with tumbleweed rolling down Knightsbridge Road, subsistence farming in Hyde Park and (most terrifyingly) slightly less rich people occupying Mayfair townhouses.

So, yes, we get it: The regulations are going to hurt. But one lawyer is not content to leave the fearmongering at a reasonable level.

The regulations, watered down or not, will wash the European Union clean of hedge funds, according to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Michael Raffan.

…the impact would be “rapid and decisive… no hedge funds will operate from within the EU.”

None! Not a one! Real wrath of God-type-stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes… The Dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria.

It’s already here.

Hedge funds are much more mobile than banks. It’s much easier for three guys in Mayfar to pack their bags and move to Geneva.