have hair v. phr. (of a financial transaction or investment) to be less than ideal; to be risky; to have complications. Editorial Note: Two common meanings of “to have hair” well-covered elsewhere are “to be old” and “to be manly, robust, or substantive.” (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
To describe something tiny or insignificant compared with something vast, you might reach for phrases like a drop in the ocean or a drop in the bucket. In Mandarin, there’s an equally picturesque phrase that translates as nine cows, one hair, 九 牛 一...
The expression If you don’t chance your arm, you won’t break your neck makes use of the sense of break your neck meaning “to go all out.” The break your neck part may refer to having success from giving all your effort...
Pure speculation, of course, but I wonder if this could be related to the informal term “hairy” meaning (according to wordnet) “hazardous and frightening; ‘hairy moments in the mountains’” (I would personally add some implication of complexity to much of the usage). I could imagine someone in the financial industry using “having hair” as a jocular variant of “hairy” to describe a “hazardous and frightening” investment and having the phrase catch on as jargon.
Perhaps. It calls to my mind food with hair on it. Something you could go ahead and eat, since hair isn’t poisonous, just disgusting.