헤지펀드(Hedge Fund)의 역사와 개념

Today, Hedge Funds play a key role in global finance system where various risks are distributed across a variety of innovative financial instruments. Hedge Funds provide benefits to financial markets by contributing to market efficiency and enhancing liquidity. otherwise, they have problems of high system risks and investors protection. Recently, major countries such as USA, England, Germany, and other countries try to regulate or supervise hedge funds because of its risks. Although as of the ending of 2007, about 11,000 hedge funds are operated with 2,250 billion dollars in global market, there is no universally accepted definition of the term "hedge fund". Even the USA where hedge funds have been operating over 50 years has no legal definition about "hedge fund" in its Acts or regulation. Only Germany defines its definition in Investment Act but it is not clear and sufficient. To regulate and supervise hedge funds efficiently, we need to understand history and unique characteristics of hedge fund, and define its legal definition in Acts to be accepted universally. Generally, Alfred Winslow Jones is credited with establishing one of the first hedge funds as a private partnership in 1949. That hedge fund invested in equities and used leverage and short selling to "hedge" the portfolio's exposure to movements of the corporate equity markets. Otherwise, Karl Kasten was a creator and operator of hedge fund with key principles of running a hedge fund and statistical theories in 1930. But he was not really interested in profits and only used his funds to illustrate the validity of his statistical theory. Accordingly, his fund with principles of running a hedge fund is not true hedge fund. Over 58 years, hedge funds experienced a number of up and down in global financial markets with global economy. Some huge hedge funds such as LTCM(Long Term Capital Management) and Amaranth collapsed and some hedge funds gained countless returns in this era. Also, some hedge funds had to close due to their terrible loses. Recently, hedge funds face with global economic crises caused by US sub-prime mortgage failure in September 2007. Most of them lost their capital funds above half and some of them bankrupted. In these reasons, people recognized the system risk and investors protection of hedge funds, once again. Hedge funds have some characteristics distinguishing from other alternative pooled investment vehicles such as mutual funds, private equity funds(PEF), venture capital or commodity pool. The characteristics are ① use of leverage as one of investment strategies, ② use of short shelling strategy, ③ charging 10-20% performance fee plus 1-2% management fee, ④ allowing fund manager to invest own money in his operating funds, ⑤ permitting of periodical redemption, ⑥ solicitation to high net worth individuals or institutional investors through private offering, and ⑦ no restrictions to operate assets. As stated above, we need to express provision and define definition of hedge fund as a legal term to regulate and supervise them sufficiently. In 2006, Minister of Finance of Korea announced that Korea will accept Hedge Funds in the future after Korean financial market is stable. Also, Korea unified six existed Laws relating with financial markets to "". In this reasons, I suggest the model of definition of hedge fund and to express provision in the near future in "Law of Capital Market and Financial Investment Business" like PEF in this article. "Hedge Fund is collective investment vehicle which establishes for profits, collects capital from accredited investor through private offering, invests its assets using leverage and short selling strategies with no restrictions, charges performance fee except management fee to investors, and allows investors to redeem periodically, and has all legal entity type permitted in Commercial Law."