There are currently more than 500 hedge fund managers with US$1 billion ($1.08 billion) or more in assets under management (AUM), and these funds represent approximately 90% of total industry assets worldwide, according to a report.
A report by Preqin notes that the global hedge fund industry is now worth approximately $2.66 trillion ($2.89 trillion). And the industry is growing, both in terms of assets and volume, with more than 4,600 fund managers now managing more than 10,500 funds, an increase from May 2013 when there were roughly 4,150 managers running approximately 10,000 funds.
There are currently 25 fund managers with more than US$20 billion ($21.7 billion) in assets. These firms have US$834 billion ($904.9 billion) in aggregate AUM, with the average assets under management about US$33.4 billion ($36.2 billion).
“The fact that the largest hedge fund managers typically have the longest track record shows that growing assets is a gradual process; these managers have been rewarded for several years of positive performance, leading to investor inflows and dominance of the industry,” notes the report.
In addition to track record, there are some noticeable patterns when looking at the breakdown of strategies employed by fund managers.
Long/short is by far the most utilized of all the strategies, with about 42% of all funds managed by managers with more than US$1 billion ($1.08 billion) in AUM using this strategy. Of the funds belonging to managers with US$1 billion to US$4.9 billion ($1.08 billion to $5.3 billion) in assets, 46% use a long/short strategy, compared with 32% of managers with more than US$20 billion ($21.7 billion) in assets.
Outside of long/short, multi-strategy and macro strategies are the most utilized strategies by the largest hedge fund managers. Forty-one percent of the more than US$20-billion- ($21.7 billion) managers use at least one of these strategies for their funds.
With the most successful multi-strategy funds growing into the largest size categories, the multi-strategy approach is less prominent among smaller managers compared to strategies such as long/short equity; just 8% of funds managed by firms with US$1 billion to US$4.9 billion ($1.08 billion to $5.3 billion) in assets use a multi-strategy approach.
Public pension funds represent the largest proportion of capital invested by US$1 billion ($1.08 billion) plus hedge fund investors (25%), followed by sovereign wealth funds (16%, up from 7% a year ago) and private sector pension funds (15%).
North American-based institutions represent more than half (54%) of this capital, although this is a decrease from the 67% of this capital that these firms represented in May 2013, showing that there have been notable allocations from large investors in other regions over the past year.
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