Soros expects hedge fund industry to contract

Billionaire US investor George Soros expects the global financial crisis to reduce the hedge fund industry to as little as one…

Billionaire US investor George Soros expects the global financial crisis to reduce the hedge fund industry to as little as one-third of its current size, he said last night.

"The hedge fund industry is going to move through a shakeout," Mr Soros said in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "In my estimation (the industry) will be reduced in size by anywhere between half and two thirds."

Mr Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, was one of the world's first hedge-fund managers and remains one of its best known.