23/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - At a mergers and acquisition conference in Dublin on Wednesday 22 February, EU Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, sang the praises of investment capital and hedge funds: 'I believe that private equity houses AND activist fund managers of all kinds - including hedge funds - play a much more valuable role than any government or any regulator in propelling the liquidity of our capital markets, in reducing the cost of capital, in driving forward Europe's growth, and in equipping European industry to survive and compete in the more challenging global markets that we now face. There is, of course, a need for supervisors responsible for systemic risk to monitor closely the activities of financial institutions who take exposures to private equity and hedge funds. But it should be a case of close and effective supervision - not strangulation.' (mb)