My Birthday!

9.00 Spend the entire morning on the latest voting list for the financial services white paper and doing some swapping of lists with other MEPs.

12.45 Lunch with the Alternative Investment Managers Association. This is a meeting on hedge funds that I am co-hosting. The presentations are very helpful. I am hoping that slowly people will begin to realise that not all hedge funds are the same and that even those that appear in the press as aggressive could not be so if there were not some underlying flaw for them to pick at. I think we must dig further on market abuse points as there was a steong belief by some MEPs that funds indulged in collusions that would in fact be illegal, which was hotly contested. I suspect that because collusion is not allowed the press is used instead.

15.00 Back to the office then summoned (well, invited) to a meeting with the Romanian Justice Minister. I am able to raise my concerns about the abilities of the Romanian legal system in technical areas like competition and financial fraud. I raise the matter of the Credit Suisse employee that I have also raised with Commissioner Frattini, who so far has not replied. In particular I raise the matter of length of proceedings.

17.00 Into Group Meeting to listen to the Romanian Prime Minister.

18.00 Reception for the South East England Development Agency.