Listed hedge funds could face increased pressure from activist investors this year as the shareholders who push for change shift attention away from other listed companies increasingly starved of the credit they need to enact activists' typical demands.

Bruce Goldfarb, president of US proxy solicitation firm Okapi Partners, said activists could buy shares in listed funds - which in many cases trade at record-high discounts to the per share value of the funds' investments - and militate for managers to buy shares back to boost their price, or wind the funds down and return cash to shareholders.