The 11th International Conference on Hedge Fund Investments has returned to the Southampton Princess Hotel after a one-year break from the Island caused by Hurricane Fabian.

The annual conference, which opened on Sunday and will close today, will not set any attendance records. President of Managed Account Reports LLC (MARS) Greg Newton said: ?There are more conferences in the hedge fund world than there used to be and so it is unfortunately not a record, but there are three other hedge fund conferences at various other parts of the world this week and none have as many as half the people that are here.?

Mr. Newton told that delegates this year are focused on two big topics.

?One is performance, because like most parts of the global investment community nobody has made any money so nobody is particularly happy with their performance, and the other thing is regulation because of the SEC hedge fund registration initiative.?

Clifford De Souza, senior investment officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments, is this morning?s featured speaker. His talk will be followed by a panel session titled ?If I really knew?what was going to happen in the markets in 2005, do you think I?d be here making this presentation??

The opinionated managers and analysts in this panel include John Mauldin of Millennium Wave Investments, David Tice of David W. Tice & Associates LLC, Steve Katznelson of RG Capital Management LP (Investment manager of the Radcliffe Funds) and Peter Matthews of Optimation Investment Management LLC.

A second session ? ?The future of prime brokerage? ? will follow. John Budzyna will moderate Peter Sanchez of RBC Hedge Fund Services, Ron Suber of Bear Stearns and ADD Richard Del Bello of UBS. They will discuss the dramatic changes within the prime brokerage sector.

Basketball great and motivational speaker Bill Russell will address the audience in the afternoon. During his 21-year career Mr. Russell won an unprecedented 18 championships as well as five MVP awards and was elected to the NBA All-Star team 12 times. He also became the first African-American coach in any professional sport and the first African-American general manager.

The closing session will feature up-and-coming managers Stephen Hu of HuFund Management LLC, Christopher Phelan of Cashel Capital Advisors Inc, Craig Kasap of Duration Capital Management LP and Kristin Mott of Laddcap Value Partners.