Sep 8 2006
F&C has responded to recent moves by Standard & Poor's (S&P) to rate hedge funds by generally backing the move but urging investors to not take short cuts when making evaluations.
The credit and ratings supplier had announced that it would start to analyse hedge funds to provide greater transparency to investors.
Francois Barthelemy, a partner of F&C Partners, has commented that hedge funds are already well-understood by investment professionals.
"S&P's move is generally a good thing, but at F&C we have made a conscious choice of not using any outsourced services because we believe it is unwise to take short cuts," he said.
"We conduct our own due diligence and we spend an inordinate amount of time and money conducting comprehensive assessments of managers' investment processes and the robustness of their organisations," he added.
Hedge funds are investment vehicles where managers, such as those for retirement funds, aggressively pursue higher-risk investments than are allowed by mutual funds, including selling short, leverage, programme trading and swaps.
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