Few individual hedge funds illustrate the violent bust and boom cycle that the industry has gone through over the past two years more graphically than Steve Roth's GLG Market Neutral Fund.
One of the oldest and best-known hedge funds in Europe - and one of the best performing over the past decade or more - the strategy has undergone a rollercoaster ride, losing more than 50% in the 2008 meltdown and since bouncing back spectacularly with a gain of over 100% to take the fund back over its high-water mark.
Most hedge fund managers had a torrid time of it in 2008. But few suffered quite such a mauling as those specialising in convertible arbitrage or multi-strategy. Unfortunately for Roth, he and his fund do both.
The combination of markets crashing, financial institutions collapsing, liquidity evaporating, massive deleveraging and forced selling, heavy investor redemptions and some hefty margin hiking by prime brokers...