For the most part, investment by HNWIs in hedge funds
has been via the market for funds of hedge funds, which
dates back to the late 1960s. As early as 1969, Mees
Pierson launched its Leveraged Capital Holdings fund together with LCF Rothschild, which is still in existence
today and is generally recognized as the world’s first fund
of hedge funds.
The more recent explosion in sales of hedge funds to
HNWIs, however, is in large measure a reflection of the fact
that regulators in Continental Europe have until very
recently been hesitant about giving private investors
access to hedge funds. Recent legislation in Italy, for
example, has reduced the minimum net worth required of
investors to dabble in hedge funds from e1 million to
e500,000.
Germany has been even slower to open up the hedge
fund sector to individual investors. It was as recently as
January that the passage of the Investment Modernization Act allowed private investors in Europe’s largest economy
to channel some of their wealth into hedge funds. For the
time being, investors in Germany are permitted to invest
only in funds of hedge funds, rather than through direct
participation in individual funds. But that should be no
bar to the expansion of hedge funds in Germany.
According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, some
experts have predicted that the German hedge fund
market could be worth as much as e50bn within five
years.
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