Some Big Investors Get to Use the Side Door.

Focuses on hedge-fund investors. Advantages that the biggest investors sometimes negotiate; Implications of the trend; Views of analysts; Observation that more people are investing in hedge funds; How, as the number of hedge funds has increase, it has given big investors, especially pension funds, more power dictating terms of investment; Mention of investor-protection laws, which demand that all investors be treated equally; Minimal oversight of the actual funds by regulators in the U.S. and Britain, where the bulk of the world's hedge fund managers are based; Why regulators have limited say over the use of side letters, which are contractual matters between funds and investors.