Hedge Fund 100 - 2004
It is better to give back than to receive.
That, evidently, is what some of the world's most successful hedge fund managers think. After a year in which industry assets soared -- thanks to healthy inflows and snappy market gains -- a number of the most notable names in the business are returning scads of capital to their investors. Prominent among these fund managers are members of the 2004 Hedge Fund 100, our third annual ranking of the biggest single-manager hedge fund complexes by assets in the world.
For the second year in a row, the list is topped by Bruce Kovner's Caxton Associates, with $11.5 billion as of December 31, 2003, followed closely by GLG Partners of London, with $11 billion and Citigroup Alternative Investments, at $9.9 billion. Rounding out the top five are Farallon Capital Management of San Francisco, at $9.856 billion, and Chicago's Citadel Investment Group, at $9.5 billion.
Altogether, the assets of the 100 largest managers rose by $99 billion, or almost 30 percent, to $439 billion in the year through December 2003. That represents 54 percent of the $817 billion in assets in the total hedge fund universe, as estimated by Hedge Fund Research, a Chicago-based database company.
In 2004's Hedge Fund 100, we provide each manager’s total assets under management as of December 31, 2003, unless otherwise indicated. Where possible we also show assets at the individual fund level, with 2003 net returns through year-end, for the five biggest funds run by a firm. Asset totals reflect internally run, single-manager hedge funds and separate accounts; they exclude fund of funds, overlay accounts, funds managed by third parties, mutual funds and traditional long-only money, dynamic money market funds, assets in collateralized debt and bond obligations, private equity and venture capital, and assets in private-equity-style vehicles that issue capital calls. We gathered the data through questionnaires completed by hedge fund managers and supplemented by extensive staff research.