Law Commons^™

Regulating Hedge Fund Managers: The Investment Company Act As A Regulatory Screen, Mercer E. Bullard

Mercer E Bullard

The Blackstone IPO in June 2007 signaled a new strategy of exploiting all of the advantages of a public offering while avoiding critical regulatory constraints. Hedge fund managers such as Blackstone are the functional equivalent of private investment companies in which only sophisticated investors are eligible to invest. Regulators have ignored this economic reality, however, in permitting hedge fund managers to evade all of the restrictions that Congress imposed on publicly offered investment pools. Hedge fund managers should be subject to the Investment Company Act, which uses a combination of statutory and regulatory exemptions as screens to ensure the optimal …