The Hedge Fund Hot 100 2013

 

60           Fir Tree Partners              Institutional flows are it, and Fir Tree Partners is one of only three major hedge fund management groups credited with having 100% of their capital coming from investing institutions (P&I). The others are  Bridgewater Associates and AQR.

59           Prisma Capital Partners        Half way through last year Prisma was one of five fund of funds groups globally to have doubled in size over five years (Rock Creek was also one of those). KKR spotted this distinction and bought Prisma in June, when it had $7.8bn in AUM – this had reached $8.5bn by year end.

58           Rock Creek Group           Wells Fargo purchased a 35% stake in fast growing fund of funds group Rock Creek to be able to offer its clients (in-house) hedge fund product, as part of its aim to double the size of its asset management business in 7 years.

57           PDT Partners      Peter Muller’s spin out from Morgan Stanley could be here because it is expanding by opening offices in London and Hong Kong. It is not. PDT Partners is hot because it already has accumulated $2.3bn in assets, and $500m of that was an early stage allocation from Blackstone. It is unprecedented for such a large allocation to come with no participation in the manager’s economics. PDT is very hot.

56           Research For Hedge Funds          The most important research for hedge funds is whatever they commission themselves, whether from stockbrokers, independent research houses, market researchers or expert networks. The focus recently has gone more to the bottom-up from the macro, as the concerns about whether we are in risk-on or risk-off have become “where can I get leverage to a particular factor bet?”, and “should I take the idiosyncratic risk in this stock?”

55           AQR Capital Management            Antti Ilmanen a senior portfolio manager in AQR’s London office has just proved his academic credentials to an unnecessary degree. He not only won the prize for best article in The Journal of Portfolio Management with “The Death of Diversification Has Been Greatly Exaggerated,” but he won the runners up prize too.

54           New York City Retirement System           The City’s five pension funds reflect the tactical shift from using funds of funds to direction allocations. The $120bn system first allocated to fund of funds Permal in 2011, and then last year allocated to five single managers. This month the city announced fresh capital commitments to new managers  Cantab Capital and Fir Tree Partners.

53           BlueCrest Capital Management             BlueCrest has won more institutional mandates in the United States in the last 12 months than any other hedge fund management group.

52           Seven Bridges Advisors LLC         Larry Cohen and Jeffrey Gittleman’s Seven Bridges Advisors was off to a flying start in 2012, its first full year, as Cohen took clients with him from  Ehrenkranz & Ehrenkranz. Whilst it is not possible to keep up the pace of asset gains of the first year the family office/endowment client base is still responding well to the new fund of funds/wealth advisory firm.

51           RMBS               Shorts in RMBS made the careers of those shorting them in 2007-9, and long positions in RMBS have powered returns for many hedge fund managers last year and this. Beneficiaries in 2012 included LibreMax Capital, Marathon Asset Management, Pine River Capital Management, Passport Capital, Kyle Bass’ Hayman Capital Management, Metacapital Management, Axonic Capital Management, Cerberus Capital Management, BTG Pactual, Citi Capital Advisors, and Tilden Park Capital Management. The best returns have been made, but there is still a bit of juice left the advocates claim.

50           CACEIS                   CACEIS, the asset servicing banking group of Crédit Agricole, got a leg up in the Global Custodian 17th annual Hedge Fund Administration Survey.  The firm was newly ranked as Top Rated Globally in (single manager) hedge fund administration, but was also newly Top Rated for administration of funds of hedge funds.

49           H2O Allegro Fund             This global macro fund from H2O Asset Management is one of a range of six with different time horizons/risk profiles. The Allegro Fund has a 3-4 year investment horizon and in performance terms has shot out of a cannon – in its first full 9 months of trading it was up 40.23%

48           HFR Asset Management               One of the few funds of hedge fund businesses with decent growth, HFR’s strengths in platform management and index fund management are serving it very well at the moment.

47           Magnitude Capital             There was a danger that Magnitude Capital would not be able to build on their success of 2011, when they bested most of their fund of funds competition, but in 2012 the New York firm was still nominated for multiple awards. AUM across the three big funds are up 16% from the start of 2012, reflecting positive inflows as well as competitive returns.

46           Toscafund           Johnny De La Hey’s financials long/short fund is part of entry number 20 in The Hot 100, but Tosca as a firm is cited because of the combination of De La Hey’s performance  and the comeback of the Tosca MidCap Equity Fund  – down  41% in 2011, but up 37.5% in 2012.

45           Threadneedle Specialist Investment Funds          Threadneedle had two of the range returning more than 30% over the last 12 months – the American Extended Alpha Fund managed by Stephen Moore, and Leigh Harrison’s UK Equity Alpha Income Fund. Combined the two funds have approaching a billion Euros of capital.

44           Cantab Capital Partners                   A recent winner in every dimension – winning mandates, closing a fund to new capital, opening a new fund, adding significant AUM. The firms UCITS hedge fund, the CCP Quantitative Ucits Fund was amongst the best performers in that format last year. Latest mandate win was last week’s $200m from New York City’s five pension funds.

43           BNP Paribas         The prime brokerage operation of BNP Paribas secured a global rating in the Global Custodian survey for the first time.

42           David Einhorn         What is the hedge fund manager’s name du jour? Plug the search term “hedge fund manager” into Google for recent web coverage and Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn is the name that comes up most often. 

41           GS Global Strategic Bond Fund               GSAM has an extensive range of alternative UCITS, and this one is ranked in the middle of the risk/reward spectrum which puts the return of 13.1% over the last 12 months into a very positive light.

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5 Responses to “The Hedge Fund Hot 100 2013”

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  1. JohN says:

    Great list! Thanks

    Those trading against the london whale should be mentioned. Also see no reference to Paulson, which is not a bad thing.

    The stellar returns often come from outsized bets that are difficult to repeat year after year. Must apply a strict quality filter to them.

    • Simon says:

      Quite right there is no mention of Paulson, is there a ground on which he qualifies as hot?

      On the London whale trade – it is not mentioned specifically, but I would like to think that some of the beneficiaries are in the Hot 100 somewhere.