Germany has switched tactics in its efforts to police the fast-growing global hedge fund industry, hoping to overcome US and British scepticism by encouraging the industry itself to compile a voluntary code of conduct.

Washington and London would support a code that emerged “spontaneously” and “voluntarily” from the hedge fund industry, Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, said after meeting colleagues from the Group of Eight industrial nations in Potsdam at the weekend. If funds adopted a code themselves “then we have the same opinion”, he said.