Hedge fund industry’s unease with media is all too obvious

For more proof of the hedge fund industry’s uneasy relationship with the media, consider last week’s inaugural Connecticut World Hedge Fund Forum, co-sponsored by the state and the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association Inc. in Fairfield. After initially adopting a policy to discourage reporters from attending the event, organizers introduced an eleventh-hour rule change to welcome all preregistered media — provided they were willing to tiptoe through an agenda of on- and off-the-record sessions and comments. Part of the appeal for attendees at the Greenwich gathering might have been the notion of keeping the media at arm’s length. An e-mail notice laying out parameters for the working media read like a prospectus, carefully covering any and all likely and unlikely scenarios. At least two sessions — one including a panel of hedge fund managers and one including a group of institutional-class investor representatives — were deemed completely off the record. To be granted access to all sessions, media representatives had to agree that the remarks of some speakers, as well as “comments attributed to them by others,” during or after each session, would be off the record. That isn’t exactly a warm welcome, and it does make one wonder what the industry might be so worried about.