Eliane Chavagnon
Reporter
29 August 2012
Daily News Analysis
The “billion dollar club” of single-manager hedge funds - those which oversee over $1 billion - saw assets under management increase from $1.08 trillion at the end of 2011 to $1.146 trillion in the first half of 2012, new data from PerTrac shows.
According to the firm's mid-year update of its annual study on the size and composition of the hedge fund industry, at end-H1 the $1 billion-plus funds represented 60.6 per cent of all assets invested with single-manager hedge funds. This segment also "reigned supreme" within funds of hedge funds, with 48.7 per cent of assets controlled by the 3.24 per cent of firms which each managed over $1 billion
Single-manager hedge funds increased their reported AuM by 5.23 per cent to $1.892 trillion. By contrast, the amount of money invested in funds of hedge funds fell by 4.92 per cent to $425 billion, representing a "continued decline" in these investment vehicles. According to PerTrac, part of the slide in those funds’ assets is attributable to the decline in the number of them reporting information to databases, which slipped by 3.81 per cent to 3,259.
However, despite the drop for funds of hedge funds, the total reported amount invested within the hedge fund industry - including funds of hedge funds and single-manager hedge funds (of which commodities trading advisors are considered a subset) - climbed to $2.317 trillion during the same period.
The total number of all funds reporting to databases jumped by 4.61 per cent to 14,013, led by single-manager hedge funds, whose ranks swelled 7.46 per cent to 10,754 funds, the firm said.
Most of the gains in the number of single-manager hedge funds (75 per cent) came from small and start-up funds with less than $25 million in AuM.
