A confirmed total of nearly 500 hedge funds shut down in 2008 – counting each strategy only once and not for each and every onshore or offshore version, or currency class (as in some other databases). This is a big surge from previous years in all the major regions.
In the US, there were at least 190 shutdowns. Together with other shutdowns of funds managed in Canada, Brazil and from offshore locations in the Caribbean, the total for the Americas was well over 220. According to research by our team at Absolute Return, these funds at their peak had run combined assets of nearly $84 billion – led in size by a range of Madoff feeder funds. The number of closures and the amount of assets affected were both much more than double the totals for the previous year.
There are no comparable figures for peak assets of the fund...