The aim of this study is to analyze the market-effects of mutual fund regulation, and to give detailed account of the role of investor protection, as well as corporate governance and transparency standards within the mutual fund industry. At the moment, voices emanating from both among investors and among regulators have been demanding improvements in transparency and governance standards. Various surveys of European mutual fund and financial market investors and insiders conducted by the EDHEC-Risk Institute have found that while investors generally demand improved levels of transparency, in some cases by overwhelming margins, fund industry insiders are more ambiguous in their outlook. In particular, the 2013 EDHEC-Risk Index Transparency Survey indicates that investors support more robust transparency, disclosure, and due diligence standards. Investors are dissatisfied with the IOSCO standards, which are widely seen as insufficient. EDHEC-Risk’s 2010 survey of hedge fund investors and insiders found that the hedge fund sector’s institutional investors would also like to see an improvement in transparency and governance standards. In both cases, investors would like to see more widespread adoption of the EU’s UCITS standards, which are quickly being accepted worldwide. Overall, investors would like disclosure standards for many European financial products to be at least as robust as they are for the mutual fund sector in Europe. Given that opacity typically increases the scope for conflicts of interest to play out as self-dealing and intensifies, these findings are rather straightforward. Financial industry insiders on the others hand are not of one mind on the matter. The 2010 survey of hedge fund investors and insiders also found that custodians and depositaries in general are somewhat hesitant about European UCITS standards and many depository professionals view their role as unclear and insufficiently defined. Asset managers meanwhile, are considerably more supportive of such standards, in order to tap into the growth of the mutual fund sector.