ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at three strategies of hedge funds which, in the course of doing their business, make wide claims about their contribution to the good functioning of markets, their enhancement of investors' returns and their policing of competence, honesty and decency in the markets and even in sovereign states. It evokes a variety of responses from other market participants and from regulatory communities, including embarrassment, outrage and counter-strategies. The chapter explores hedge funds' positioning of themselves as quasi-regulatory' in relation to three strategies: activism, shorting and litigation vis-vis distressed debt. It describes the some suggested agendas for research at this intersection of politics, law and markets. Financial market participants have an interest in shaping and directing countries' political atmospheres, departmental dispositions, legal case law, regulatory rule-books and of course, specific legal and regulatory findings.
