Tudor and ESL leave the top 10, replaced by Paulson and Avenue. JPMorgan stumbles but stays on top; assets of the 262 largest firms surpass $1.6 trillion
By Josh Friedlander
With three of the 10 largest hedge fund firms losing $24 billion in assets during the second half of the year, growth of the Absolute Return Billion Dollar Club slowed to a crawl. Even so, the breakneck pace of early 2007 led the largest U.S. firms to increase assets by 34% over their prior year’s total, producing another record year for asset gathering.
Absolute Return’s biannual survey of U.S. hedge fund assets includes 262 firms, each managing more than $1 billion, with a combined total of $1.604 trillion as of January 1. Since last year, these firms have increased assets by $407 billion – $60 billion more than their gain in 2006 and greater than any one-year...