In view of the recent market turmoil many funds are confronting unprecedented pressure from investors and counterparties to provide liquidity against a backdrop of increasingly illiquid market conditions. The focus of this panel will be to discuss the common issues that hedge funds have faced and the measures that have been taken in response to such issues and the legal issues that arise in relation to such measures. The panel will go on to consider what lessons can be learned from these issues when structuring hedge funds and drafting their documentation in the future. The panel will also consider the regulatory initiatives currently being suggested globally and try and anticipate future developments. On a brighter note, the panel will also consider some of the hedge fund structures and strategies that have been implemented to take advantage of the current market volatility and the legal issues that arise in these spaces.

The panel will cover key issues for private equity funds moving forward, including the effect of global macro economics on PE fund strategies and future trends and predictions for 2009, why some private equity funds choose Cayman as the domicile for their main fund over Delaware, the future of LBO Funds, the impact of the credit crunch and outsourcing by private equity funds.

What are the recent trends affecting the European, Middle Eastern, Japanese and LatAm funds markets? What is happening in Europe on UCITS III funds and QIFs? Why are there so many private equity funds in the Middle East? What effects has the recent enactment of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law had on the sale of offshore funds to investors in Japan? With recent economic turbulence in, amongst other jurisdictions, the United States, to what extent has "decoupling" been seen in Brazilian funds or funds investing into Brazil? What other recent economic or legal factors have been of interest to investors interested in these regions?

Discussion about convergence of structured products and traditional funds given the movement of traditional banking/SFstaff into funds arena. Many managers and arrangers are now doing both fund and debt deals or hybrids on a concurrent basis and tailoring structures to meet specific client demands.

In today’s volatile markets, hedge funds are facing a multitude of operational challenges. These challenges include issues such as restricting liquidity, lack of representative market values, increasing margin requirements, managing events of default under lending agreements, monitoring exposure to credit risk of prime brokers and addressing increasing levels of redemption requests. The focus of this panel is examine how legal counsel and other hedge fund service providers, including administrators, investment managers and directors are dealing with such issues.

The panel will examine the issues that arise for a hypothetical Cayman Islands corporate hedge fund in crisis.