Arizona Daily Star – With fraud among hedge funds rising and ordinary investors getting hurt, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday he will push for new emergency regulations of the high-risk investment pools.
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox disclosed the plan in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. It comes several weeks after a federal appeals court overturned the agency’s new rules for oversight of hedge funds, which formerly catered to the very wealthy but are increasingly luring ordinary investors.
Concern about hedge funds’ explosive growth and virtually unbridled operations had prompted the SEC regulations, which required most hedge- fund managers to register with the agency, thereby opening the funds’ books to SEC examiners. The appeals court ruling on June 23 left hedge funds  with assets estimated to exceed $1 trillion  in a regulatory vacuum, experts have said.
