Not only banking products and credit derivatives, but also institutions such as hedge funds or private equity funds are often believed to have played a significant role during the latest global financial turmoil. In the light of serious economic problems, questions arose whether regulations of these institutions were sufficient or whether the effects of the global crisis could have been smoothed, if regulation and supervision had been stricter. This book analyses the non-bank regulatory framework with particular attention devoted to hedge funds and private equity funds. It describes functioning of the funds, discusses their performance during the global financial crisis and, predominantly, describes and analyses the EU and U.S. regulatory reforms with respect to these institutions, which have arisen as a response to the crisis, namely the AIFM Directive and the Dodd-Frank Act. Based on the analysis of the measures incorporated in these reforms, it outlines a new proposal of the alternative investment fund regulatory framework, which, if applied, would lead to a more efficient functioning of the industry than what is likely to be the outcome of the already adopted reforms.