In "ファンドモニタリング調査の集計結果について" (Results of the fund monitoring survey), published in October 2015, the Financial Services Agency defines a hedge fund as "a fund that manages investors' assets using techniques such as leverage, derivatives transactions and long-short positions, aiming to increase returns" (our translation). A long-short position combines long positions with short positions1.

In Form PF, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) treats a private fund (other than a fund holding securitized assets) as a hedge fund if it meets any one of the conditions on performance fees, the size of borrowing or positions, or short selling. Consider a hypothetical example of a fund with net assets of 10 billion yen. It meets the condition on the size of borrowing or positions if it may borrow more than 5 billion yen, or may hold positions whose notional amounts, without netting longs and shorts, exceed 20 billion yen in total2.

Notes

  1. Financial Services Agency, "ファンドモニタリング調査の集計結果について" (Results of the fund monitoring survey) (in Japanese), October 2015, "ヘッジファンド" (Hedge fund) under "（参考）用語の定義" (Definitions of terms), page 20 (page 21 of the PDF), and "株式ロング・ショート" (Equity long-short) under "ヘッジファンドの投資戦略に係る用語の定義" (Definitions of hedge fund strategies), page 21 (page 22 of the PDF). ↩

  2. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Form PF" (reference copy, SEC 2048 (4-25)), Glossary of Terms, "Hedge fund," pages 88–89 (pages 89–90 of the PDF). ↩