ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the position, not because hedge funds per se deserve to be singled out but, on the contrary, because of what they say about the broader regulatory framework for the financial industry. It shows that hedge funds are an integral part of commercial strategies of the financial industry, countering the idea that they might be 'independent', and a quality that informs part of the regulatory discussion about them. This led to multiple manipulations and explorations of the imaginaries of the individual hedge fund manager and of market efficiency as developed by financial theory and the regulatory framework. On the one hand, for regulatory reasons that are similar across jurisdictions, these major players needed to comply with standard approaches of risk management in the financial industry, in order to remain within the limits of what could be proposed to a general public of non-qualified or non-sophisticated investors.
