Should hedge funds be banned from private polling?

Businesses accused of gaming referendum
result to make billions in profits

One-Minute Read

It follows a Bloomberg report that found hedge funds had
hired leading pollsters to provide private exit polls and other
data on voter behaviour in the run-up to the EU referendum.

Electoral law prohibits pollsters from making their findings
public while the voting booths are open, but no laws prohibit the
data being passed directly to city institutions for trading
purposes.

The Times says this means “hedge funds would be
in an ideal position to bet on changes to the pound when the
private polling data went public”.

Shorting the pound also “let hedge funds avoid the ensuing crash
which led to chaos in the global markets”, says the London Evening Standard.

“Pollsters said they believed Brexit yielded one of the most
profitable single days in the history of their industry,” Bloomberg
said. “Some hedge funds that hired them cleared in the hundreds of
millions of dollars, while their industry… was battered by the
chaos Brexit wrought in global financial markets.”

Polling companies that sold data included YouGov, Survation,
ICM, BMG and ComRes, “with at least a dozen hedge funds buying the
exclusive or syndicated polling data” reports Business Insider UK.

According to one source, YouGov made £760,000 selling a private
exit poll to one hedge fund, while several investment firms made in
excess of £750 million in the hours after the Brexit vote
closed.

Even before the vote there were fears many financiers were looking to cash in on early
exit polls.

Bloomberg also raised questions about the referendum night
pronouncements of prominent Brexiteer Nigel Farage. The news agency
claimed the former leader of Ukip leader had twice said publicly on
the night that Leave had likely lost despite having information
suggesting that it had won.

It also said that he had changed “his story” about who told him
what when.