Hedge Funds Need Better Public Relations

Date: Monday, September 18, 2006
Author: Dailyii.com

The way John Maltby sees it, hedge funds need to do a better job at their own public relations, or else suffer the consequence of being misidentified. Speaking at MARHedge forum in Europe, the senior V.P. at Stamford, Conn.-based DKR Capital says hedge funds have allowed themselves to be defined in the media as "high net worth, high fees and lightly regulated" together with reports that focus only on those HF firms that get themselves deep in trouble. Maltby complained that politicians pick on hedge funds as easy targets "to score points," but ironically are investors themselves. In addition, vendors touting their HF-related services, he says, paint an inaccurate picture of the industry by placing too much emphasis on portfolio and less on operations. Maltby says he supports the public relations initiative announced by the Alternative Investments Management Association, to educate the public and the press about the benefits of hedge funds, but also urged the industry to with enough transparency to make investors comfortable without jeopardizing HF confidentiality. In a related development, the European Private Equity and Venture capital Association has launched a campaign to better educate the public about the industry through greater public disclosure, including information on buyout and p.e. fund returns.