Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, said he is considering legislation that would require hedge funds to retain trading data, e-mail and other records for the purpose of due diligence and recovery. Mr. Frank made his remarks at a hearing today on hedge funds and systemic risks that featured testimony from witnesses including Eric R. Sirri, director, division of market regulations at the SEC, and Robert Steel, under secretary for domestic finance.
Steve Adamske, Mr. Frank’s press secretary, said there is no timeline for possible introduction of hedge fund record-keeping legislation and stressed that “this is just one piece of a larger package of regulation.” Mr. Adamske said Mr. Frank is “not grandstanding. He (and the committee) are in a process of discovery, trying to find out more about the levels of systemic risk introduced by hedge funds. Private pools of capital have had huge investments by pension funds, particularly in recent years, and my boss (Mr. Frank) wants to find out where the risk to pension assets may exist.”
