Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Who's afraid of the Provincial securities regulators?

Globe and Mail: Hedge fund managers will have to register with regulators, reported at Dealbreaker.com

Canadian regulators are going to require fund managers to be registered with provincial securities commissions as part of a multi-pronged project to improve oversight of the scandal-plagued hedge fund sector.
The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella group for provincial securities commissions, said yesterday it will introduce new registration requirements for fund managers — those people who set up, operate, and promote fund companies.
Registration means regulators will ensure fund managers have appropriate capital and insurance, and have sufficient experience and proficiency to carry out their duties, said Leslie Byberg, manager of investment funds at the Ontario Securities Commission.

As I opined in the comments section at Dealbreaker.com,
hedge fund registration here is a pretty big non-event, since securities enforcement is really, really slack in Canada. The only people who ever get taken down are Personal Financial Planners who commit outright theft. It takes a lot of painfully obvious fraud to get the Provincial Authorities to sit up and take notice. Even then, they are so woefully under-staffed, under-budgeted, and over-worked that they seldom have the resources to seek criminal proceedings.

Al Rosen's columns in Canadian Business Magazine are nice and vitriolic about the state of securities law enforcement in Canada:

Al Rosen archive at Canadian Business Online

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