Investor protection, hedge fund leverage and valuation

Abstract

Weak investor protection inevitably causes concentrated insider equity ownership, economic decision distortion and resource misallocation (Shleifer and Vishny, 1993). Our paper focuses on theoretical hedge fund valuation and dynamic leverage choice by incorporating the consideration of weak investor protection. The weak investor protection effect on dynamic leverage choice is ambiguous, as it depends on the managers’ moneyness ratio, which will certainly have a negative effect on the hedge fund investors’ payoff. Thus, managers should take more ownership and engage in short volatility strategies in weak investor protection to secure their total payoff.Weak investor protection also significantly increases the hedge fund founding break-even alpha.