Mayor of London to lobby for hedge funds
London Mayor and influential Conservative politician Boris Johnson has pledged to personally lobby for the UK alternatives sector at a European level, saying that having a strong hedge fund and private equity industry in the UK capital is "not just good for London, it is good for Europe".
Speaking this morning at an event at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, Johnson warned that the controversial Alternative Investment Fund Management directive could be "the start of a flood of draft directives that will start to filter out of Brussels."
The European Commission proposed the directive in April this year, and in a white paper yesterday from HM Treasury, the UK Government said that some serious details need to be altered for the directive to be acceptable to the UK.
Boris Johnson said this morning: "I support strong and sensible regulation of financial services to prevent a recurrence of the financial crisis that everyone in Europe is now suffering. However, in my book this means regulating at the right level. As financial services are a global business, this must be set at a global level by the G20."
He added: "No other European city's financial services sector is competing on the same international level as London, and the EU Commission must recognise this. That is why I've decided to personally take the lead on this and lobby key figures. London's main competitors are outside the EU, including New York and Hong Kong, so it's blatantly obvious that this unilateralist approach will damage our competitiveness."
Other speakers at the event included Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State Business, Innovation & Skills, and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.
-- write to mturner@efinancialnews.com
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