By Susan Barreto
Hedge fund activity is back. Knowledge is greater, but caution (and excessive due diligence) seems to be the name of the game when allocating in the post-Madoff environment.
With $22 billion in search activity in 2010, it seems that the time from meeting to allocation seems to be increasing – so only $12 billion in deals got done according to InvestHedge’s annual round up of mandate activity.
That said, it is a three-fold increase on the completed activity of 2009. The lion’s share of the assets, some 63%, equivalent to $7.8 billion, was allocated directly with $4.5 billion going to funds of hedge funds. Brevan Howard picked up at least six public mandates in 2010, worth close to $500 million in assets.
It was not only in 2010 that saw most hedge fund managers finally seeing the benefits of the lower fee negotiation and...