6  “Accredited investor” refers to an individual with net personal assets exceeding $ million or a corporation with total net assets of more than $ million. 7  “Qualified investor” means an individual with net personal assets exceeding $ million, a corporation with total net assets of more than $ million, a collective investment scheme that is marketed only to accredited investors, or a collective investment scheme that is not marketed in Singapore. 8  Brooks, C. and H.M. Kat, 2001, “The Statistical Properties of Hedge Fund Index Returns and Their Implications for Investors”. BIS Review 52/2002  3  To enhance disclosure in prospectuses for offers of investments (including hedge funds), Part XIII of the SFA which came into effect in July this year introduced new prospectus checklists, prospectus registration procedures and advertising regulations. A prospectus must contain all material information that a reasonable investor would require to make an informed investment decision, such as the investment objective and specific investment risks of a fund, the fees and charges, and the track record of the fund manager. For the market to exercise discipline on prospectus disclosure, prospectuses that are lodged with MAS are posted on the MAS web-site for public comment for a minimum two weeks. We view this as an advance in speed and efficiency. As a safeguard, MAS may refuse to register a prospectus if it does not satisfy the disclosure requirements or if its registration is not in the public interest.
In the space of five years (1792-97) it almost tripled, and Pitt’s government tapped not just financial markets but the resources of the Bank of England to finance it18. Second, fears of French invasion led to a steady increase in the desire to hold gold over paper notes and a further drain from the Bank’s holdings (Chart 1119). When in late February 1797 a small French force actually landed in Wales the government immediately took to the decision to suspend  Sources: Thomas and Dimsdale (2017) and Bank calculations. convertibility and with it the gold standard. This was a seismic event in British financial history and was vigorously debated, and in many quarters vigorously opposed, throughout the long Napoleonic wars20. Several early economists – notably  16  Kynaston (2017), Chapter 15. I discussed the role of beliefs about how inflation was determined in a talk earlier this year (Broadbent (2020)). 18 The Bank took only a fraction of new government debt – less than £ compared with an increase in the total of over £ – but it was enough to deplete its gold reserves significantly, by around a quarter, during the first four years of the war. Most of the growth in the Bank of England’s assets, in those years and throughout the Napoleonic wars, reflected higher “discounting” (i.e. buying) of private-sector securities. 19 Chart 11 excludes long-term government debt holdings from the assets and central bank equity from the liabilities.