One Step Ahead: Private Equity and Hedge Funds After the Global Financial Crisis - Softcover

Timothy Spangler is a Forbes.com contributor and writes the award-winning blog Law of the Market. He spent two decades working on Wall Street and in the City of London, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and a Visiting Lecturer at University College London's Faculty of Law. He regularly appears as a commentator on CNN, CNBC, BBC, and Sky News.

Private equity and hedge funds are an often misunderstood and maligned segment of the investment world, sparsely regulated and often relegated to the dark corners of Wall Street, but together they represent more than $3 trillion in assets. Hedge funds specialize in complex investment strategies, often involving high risk; they are increasingly sought after by pension managers, university endowments, charities, and banks to boost yields and play “catch-up” on prior losses. Private-equity funds purchase distressed and undervalued companies for reorganization; Mitt Romney’s ties to private-equity fund Bain Capital put the industry into the spotlight during the “private-equity bashing” of the 2012 presidential campaign. Spangler examines the state of the industry in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which caused more than 1,000 funds to shutter. He considers the consequences of financial-reform legislation and the Bernie Madoff scandal that exposed these funds to higher scrutiny. Spangler dispels myths about how these funds operate and comes down as an advocate for them without sugarcoating the risks involved. Spangler is a writer, commentator, lawyer, and academic who divides his time between Southern California and the UK. --David Siegfried