One of the largest and most prestigious events on the hedge fund calendar The EDHEC Hedge Fund Days 2006 took place in London from 14 to 16 February.

This event, organised by EDHEC, attracted the interest of more than 1,000 people, some of whom were EDHEC MSc students who had the opportunity to meet decision-makers from the industry.

The 2006 EDHEC Hedge Fund Days brought together academics from one of the top European business schools and highly-respected professionals, giving both groups the opportunity to exchange ideas and analyse the latest research results from EDHEC's Risk and Asset Management Research Centre. For three days, the EDHEC Hedge Fund Days conference was the place to be for everyone interested in alternative and institutional investments. Institutional investors and their advisors, hedge fund and fund of hedge fund managers, and other practitioners attended the presentations given by EDHEC professors and research associates and followed the comments from industry professionals.

The first day of the conference was exclusively reserved for institutional investors who had the opportunity to explore the various EDHEC research programmes that are of interest to pension schemes and other final investors. The second and the third days included: presentations of new EDHEC research on the determinants of fund of hedge fund performance, EDHEC's recommendations on fund of hedge fund reporting, a major study on mitigating hedge funds' operational risks, a research paper on adding value to hedge fund investments through active style allocation decisions and the results of an EDHEC study on the existence or otherwise of a capacity effect in the hedge fund industry.

Mr. Thomas Dionysopoulos, Deputy-Head of Quantitative Research at HSBC Halbis Partners, HSBC Investments (France) was at the event. He believes that alternative investments is one of the most important issues nowadays in the financial world and that most investment professionals need to learn more about how the hedge fund industry works and what it has to offer the general investment approach. He went to the hedge fund days to see the results of the alternative investment research conducted by the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre and to hear what other professionals had to say about these findings. For him it was also a great opportunity to meet people and express his own ideas on these subjects.

Mr. Dionysopoulos was surprised to see that so many investment professionals responded positively to EDHEC's invitation to explore the topic of hedge funds in London. There is no denying that EDHEC has had a considerable impact on the industry. It is perfectly positioned between theory and practice. The research that EDHEC conducts is vital for the financial industry and helps practitioners fully understand some of the complex subjects in finance without losing the intuition behind those concepts. Mr. Dionysopoulos commented "To my knowledge, no other business school is so active in alternative investments from both a theoretical and practical point of view."  He believes that the results presented were provocative and generated fascinating discussions. He also pointed out that although not all of the studies from the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre were positively received by the practitioners, this added interest by fuelling passionate debate.

Peter O'Kelly, Marketing Manager of the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre and a member of the organising team believes that the large turnout at the event is proof of the significant international interest in the quality of EDHEC's research. Meetings such as this considerably help EDHEC students, since the managers who participate respect the quality that is synonymous with EDHEC, both in terms of research and the standard of education.

EDHEC plans to organise other key events for finance professionals in the near future, including a two-day EDHEC ETF Summit in November 2006 in Paris and an EDHEC conference on Private Banking and Wealth Management in Geneva in March 2007.