The French regulator wants to attract more hedge fund managers to Paris, and is willing to relax regulations to do so. But the biggest hurdle remains local institutional investors and their distrust of hedge funds.

Speaking at a recent roundtable event in Paris organised by industry publisher Opalesque, Patrice Bergé-Vincent, head of the asset management regulation policy division at the AMF, the French financial market regulator, said: "For us as the French financial market regulator, it is a 'necessity' to promote the installation of managers in France [...] We prefer to have more managers, more management companies in France."