George Osborne will tomorrow be forced to accept tougher regulations on the UK's highly profitable hedge fund industry as European leaders press ahead with plans to crack down on the sector.
On his first visit to Brussels as chancellor, Osborne had hoped to resist plans which he and his predecessor Alistair Darling were strongly against.
But after months of threats and deliberations, French, German and Spanish leaders within the EU are expected to push ahead with a directive which is aimed at clamping down on speculators who they believe contributed to the global credit crunch and more recently pushed Greece to the brink of collapse.
In another attempt to stop market jitters, financial services commissioner Michel Barnier promised to deal "very severely" with the use of credit default swaps, the instruments that investors buy to protect themselves against a potential default, but were used to bet against a country's ability to pay its debts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/17/hedge-funds-eu-regulations
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
