I was watching Will Hutton's Dispatches programme on bank failures last night, and it really emphasised the point that it is impossible to generalise about hedge funds, much as many of us lefties like to. Bear Stearns was floored by its hedge funds' exposure to CDOs, as part of a big punt on subprime. Yet at the same time (and subsequently) there were hedge funds profiting from a wholly ...

Leading contender for most deliciously ironic event of the credit crash was the news this week  that Porsche had cost hedge funds up to $25bn through some complex financial mechanism which I can’t quite get my head around, but which seems to have involved them lending VW shares to the funds to short sell without

Hedge funds and private equity firms are hoping a resurgent right wing in European politics will give them stronger support when they call for changes to proposed legislation they see threatening their industries.

The European Commission's draft directive on hedge funds and private equity funds can and will be improved, according to the UK's financial services minister

The rise and power of hedge funds represents one of the biggest changes to the global economy over the past half century. Predominantly limited liability partnerships, most hedge funds are exempted from much of the regulation that applies to investment...

A post on the Financial Times blog earlier this week indicates that hedge funds had a greater role in bringing about the financial crisis than their not-us-guv protests would have us believe. Photis Lysandrou argues that hedge funds pressured banks into creating the infamous CDOs. But, while the banks were hit hard by the resulting crisis and some would have failed completely but for govern...

France pressed its European Union partners to impose strict rules on hedge funds, inspite of Swedish warnings that even the tightest regulation would be no guarantee against financial turmoil akin to that of the past two years

Sweden, the new holder of the EU presidency, came to the defence of hedge funds and private equity, saying it did not blame them for the financial crisis and would press for improvements in EU proposals to regulate them

The US Federal Reserve lent billions of dollars to hedge funds as part of its emergency liquidity programme during the financial crisis, data released by the central bank show

It took only 5 months for the price of oil to plummet from $150 to under $40 in the second part of the year. Meanwhile oil consumption did not even decrease 10%, so what is the real cause of this collapse you may ask? Hedge funds. Let me explain. Oil Hedge Funds During the first part of 2008, Western economies were already slowing down noticeably and hedge funds gradually pulled trillions of dolla...