To the offices of Mishcon de Reya for a seminar titled ‘After the Crunch? Considerations for Hedge Fund Managers’. There was a talk from Deutsche Bank and one from Grant Thornton as well as a two from Mischons. The first Mishcons presentation was around best practice in the industry particularly the statements provided produced by AIMA, HFSB and the US President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. But judging by the questions raised after the presentations and discussions with other attendees during the drinks and canapés that followed, I don’t have much confidence that anyone working in Hedge Funds is taking any of it very seriously. After all one of the USPs of hedge funds must be that they are lightly regulated and therefore better equipped to respond quickly to fast changing markets and environments, and their investors will no doubt be sophisticated enough to perform their own due diligence and make a call themselves on any issues that regulations might be expected to oversee. The second Mishcons talk was around litigation and focused on the financial services industry but there were a couple of points made that I think would be worthwhile repeating here as they might be useful to anyone who is or might be involved in any kind of action:

1. That litigation is all about settlement as 95% of cases settle
2. That legal privilege can be used to avoid document disclosure in potential future cases

Also mentioned was the emergence of litigation as an asset class and it will be interesting to see how this will develop. It was an engaging and educational event and having found both Mishcons partners that I know separately to be particularly amiable, it was no surprise to find that I was very well looked after by my host today.