The 23rd Annual Ranking of the Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers
In a rebound year for the stock market, ten hedge fund managers who lost money in 2022 qualified for the Rich List this year, including No. 1 Chris Hohn of TCI Fund Management.
Introduction
1 Chris Hohn
2 Israel (Izzy) Englander
3 Kenneth Griffin
4 David Tepper
5 Steven Cohen
6 Philippe Laffont
7 James Simons
8 John Overdeck & David Siegel
10 Chase Coleman
11 O. Andreas Halvorsen
12 William Ackman
13 David Shaw
14 Paul Singer
15 Scott Shleifer
16 Karthik Sarma
17 Stephen Mandel Jr.
18 Ray Dalio
19 Chris Rokos
20 Larry Robbins
21 Nelson Peltz
22 Anthony Clake
23 Joseph Edelman
24 Paul Marshall & Ian Wace
Now this is what you call a reversal of fortune.
One year after losing 18 percent, Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management surged to a 33 percent gain in 2023. As a result, the London-based, sometimes-activist investor personally made $2.9 billion, enabling him to top Institutional Investor’s 23rd annual Rich List — the definitive ranking of the 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers in 2023.
Hohn had qualified for the ranking for eight straight years until he dropped off in 2022. Most of his earnings stemmed from gains generated by his own capital invested in the fund. He received a small amount of fees as TCI had to hit its high-water mark before it could charge a performance fee.
Hohn is one of ten hedge fund managers who lost money in 2022 — large sums in many cases — but still wound up qualifying for the Rich List this year. Several of the ten are still below their high-water marks, including Tiger Global Management’s Chase Coleman and Scott Shleifer and Perceptive Advisors’ Joseph Edelman.
This is possible because under II’s Rich List methodology, managers qualify in two ways: our calculation of gains from their personal capital in their funds and their share of the fees.
Of course, a high-water mark is applied when calculating performance fees but is not applied to individuals’ personal capital. Rather, the annual ranking is a snapshot in time. So whereas a manager may have lost a large amount of personal capital during a down year, he may still see that capital benefit when a fund goes up.
Altogether, the 25 highest earners made a total of $26.085 billion. This works out to an average of $1.043 billion per person. The median earner made $750 million.
As a result, 2023 was the third-most-profitable year for the 25 highest earners, slightly behind the total in 2021. The best year was 2020, when the top 25 made a total of $31.71 billion. This year, 11 of the 25 made at least $1 billion.
In 2022, the ranking was devoid of stock pickers; however, this year’s ranking includes investors deploying a wide range of strategies. That said, the four highest earners behind Hohn are all multistrat or eclectic investors who roam the wide world of investing for the most attractive opportunities. Multistrat rivals Izzy Englander of Millennium Management ($2.8 billion) and Ken Griffin of Citadel ($2.6 billion) rank second and third, respectively.
Renaissance Technologies’ Jim Simons finishes seventh, with $1.3 billion, enabling the quant GOAT to maintain the distinction of being the only manager to qualify for the Rich List in all 23 years.
Six of the 25 have roots in Julian Robertson Jr.’s Tiger Management family. All lost money in 2022, but their large net worth enabled them to qualify in 2023 based on gains on their own capital.
1
Chris Hohn
TCI Fund Management
$2.9 Billion
London-based Hohn tops this year’s Rich List after his highly concentrated, mostly long portfolio surged 33 percent, its largest gain in four years. The strong performance more than erased 2022’s 18 percent loss. In 2023, TCI generated $12.9 billion in gains for its investors, more than any other firm, according to LCH Investments. Last year’s biggest U.S. listed winners were Alphabet, Moody’s, and Visa, up 58 percent, 40 percent, and 25 percent, respectively. Hohn has long been known as an activist, but in an interview with Institutional Investor two years ago, he stressed, “Activism is now more opportunistic rather than fundamental for us.” Last year, he persuaded Airbus to drop its attempt to purchase a minority position in French IT services company Atos’s digital unit. Hohn also called for the removal of the chairman and two board members of Cellnex, Europe’s largest mobile phone tower operator. One month later, two independent board members resigned. Several years ago, Hohn launched his “Say on Climate” initiative to address climate change. He was knighted for his philanthropy in 2014. Recently, he took the Giving Pledge to eventually give the majority of his wealth to charity.
2
Israel (Izzy) Englander
Millennium Management
$2.8 Billion
Steady Izzy indeed. Millennium is rarely the best multistrategy performer, but it continues to post returns that rank near the top of the strategy. It gained about 10 percent in 2023. Millennium has more than 320 investment teams managing $62.2 billion in four major strategies: relative-value fundamental equity, equity arbitrage, fixed income, and quantitative. Last year, the firm changed its fee terms, adding an asset-based levy of approximately 1 percent, to be credited against any performance charges that are generated. Until now, Millennium had charged only a performance fee, which was calculated after all of the firm’s expenses, a common arrangement among major multistrategy funds. Talks about a possible partnership or business arrangement with Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, meanwhile, broke off in late 2023. Englander ranked second on the Rich List in each of the two previous years after topping the ranking in 2020.
3
Kenneth Griffin
Citadel
$2.6 Billion
Griffin ranked third among the highest-earning hedge fund managers in 2023, and Citadel generated $8.1 billion for investors. Citadel has now made $74 billion for investors since its inception in 1990, more than any other hedge fund firm. It returned $7 billion to clients at the end of the year. All four of its main funds posted double-digit gains in 2023: The flagship Wellington fund jumped 15.3 percent; Citadel Tactical Trading Fund, also a multistrat fund, was up 14.8 percent; Citadel Equities, a long-short market-neutral fund, rose 11.6 percent; and Citadel Global Fixed Income climbed 10.9 percent. In December, Griffin and David Geffen announced a $400 million gift to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the largest single donation in the institution’s nearly 150-year history. Griffin, who has privately amassed an impressive real estate portfolio, is building a 50,000-square-foot mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, that is said to be worth $1 billion.
4
David Tepper
Appaloosa Management
$2.3 Billion
Tepper’s Carolina Panthers pro football team was a disaster on the field last year. But the hedge fund titan qualified for the Rich List for the 20th time after racking up a better than 18 percent gain. That performance was driven by four Magnificent Seven stocks: Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Amazon, which were Appaloosa’s biggest positions at year-end, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the firm’s U.S. common stock long assets. Tepper is an opportunistic investor seeking the juiciest opportunities in most markets at any given time. Before year-end, Appaloosa was managing about $17 billion. But each year, Tepper typically returns about half of the firm’s gains to investors. Since its 1993 inception, Appaloosa has posted a gross annualized return of more than 28 percent, with a net return between 23 and 25 percent, depending on the investor.
5
Steven Cohen
$1.6 Billion
Point72 Asset Management
Cohen is another hedge fund honcho who owns a sports team that suffered a disappointing 2023 season. His New York Mets finished fourth of five teams in their baseball division despite a massive payroll. But last year, Point72 gained 10.6 percent, making it one of the top-performing multistrat funds. It has more than 185 money management teams overseeing more than $32.3 billion. Its largest strategy, by both assets and head count, is discretionary long-short equities. Others include Cubist Systematic Strategies, which engages in automated trading in many liquid markets; a global macro business that makes discretionary investments; and a private venture capital business. In recent years, Point72 has aggressively built up its macro trading teams. At year-end, its four largest U.S. common stock longs were Magnificent Seven members Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta.
6
Philippe Laffont
Coatue Management
$1.4 Billion
Laffont is among ten hedgies — and six Tiger Management descendants — to qualify for the Rich List after suffering huge losses in 2022. Coatue gained 21.5 percent in 2023, with its long-only fund surging 55 percent as the equity markets rebounded. Six of its ten largest U.S.-listed longs at the end of the third quarter and five of its top seven at year-end were Magnificent Seven members. Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon accounted for roughly one-quarter of the fund’s assets for most of the year. Coatue, which operates a separate venture capital business, last year raised money for Coatue Ventures III. The firm had been seeking as much as $500 million for the new fund, The Information reported. The venture business focuses on the earliest stages of seed and Series A funding, according to Coatue’s website.
7
James Simons
Renaissance Technologies
$1.3 Billion
Last year was a rough one for Renaissance’s public computer-driven hedge funds. RIDA lost 70 basis points and RIDGE was essentially flat, although RIEF gained 7.5 percent. Even so, the 85-year-old mathematician and founder of Renaissance maintained the distinction of being the only hedge fund manager to qualify for the Rich List in all 23 years. “Simons is one of a kind,” Theodore Aronson, a partner at quantitative money manager AJO Vista, told II last year. “He’s made more money than God, and has made more money than God for others.” Last June, the Simons Foundation announced a $500 million endowment gift to Stony Brook University, which Simons and his wife, Marilyn, graduated from and where Simons had served as chairman of the math department. Over the years, he has given the university substantial sums. The latest gift was deemed the largest unrestricted donation to an institution of higher education in U.S. history.
8
(Tied)John OverdeckDavid Siegel
Two Sigma
$1.2 Billion
Two Sigma’s co-founders qualify for the Rich List for the third straight year after their two largest computer-driven funds posted relatively strong results. Two Sigma Absolute Return Enhanced fund, a mostly systematic equity market-neutral fund, rose 12 percent and the firm’s equity quant fund, Two Sigma Spectrum, was up 8.6 percent. The normally low-profile $60 billion firm was thrust into the spotlight last year when it made the highly unusual disclosure in a regulatory filing that the management committee — comprised only of Overdeck and Siegel — “has been unable to reach agreement on a number of topics,” including defining roles, authorities, and responsibilities for a range of C-level officers, such as the members of the management committee and chief investment officers. The committee warned that the disagreement could affect the firm’s ability to retain or attract employees and “could continue to impact the ability of employees” to complete key tasks, adding that the “ability to achieve client mandates could be impacted over time.” Two Sigma was also rocked by news that a rogue trader was responsible for $170 million in losses.
10
Chase Coleman
Tiger Global Management
$1.1 Billion
The Tiger Cub personally made ten figures in 2023 even though most of his investors are still underwater. Last year, Tiger Global posted a 28.5 percent increase in its long-short fund and a 20.4 percent return in the long-only fund. But this performance still left many clients in the red after the long-short fund lost 56 percent in 2022 and 7 percent the previous year and the long-only fund plummeted by 67 percent in 2022. In 2023, Tiger Global had perhaps the highest exposure to the Magnificent Seven among the Tiger group. For most of the year, Meta and Microsoft were the firm’s two largest longs, combining for just over one-third of assets. Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia were also among the top-ten holdings. Together, the five stocks accounted for nearly half of the firm’s U.S. long assets. Tiger Global’s once-vaunted separate venture capital business (which it calls private equity) has sharply scaled back its volume of investments. The firm announced late last year that Scott Shleifer (No. 15 on the 2023 Rich List), a co-founder of its private equity business, would transition to the role of senior adviser.
11
O. Andreas Halvorsen
Viking Global Investors
$1 Billion
Like most Tiger-related firms, Viking lost money in 2022. But unlike its fellow felines, it easily moved above its high-water mark in 2023 because it had to overcome only small losses in recent years. Viking Global Equities, the firm’s long-short fund, gained 13.8 percent in 2023 after losing just 2.4 percent in 2022, when the S&P 500 fell 19 percent, and the flagship slid only 4.5 percent in 2021. Viking Long Fund, meanwhile, surged 29.3 percent last year. Viking’s hedge fund generally does not invest in private equity and has less exposure to tech than other Tiger Cubs. And in its second-quarter 2022 letter, Viking told investors that in the first six months of that year it had removed “meaningful risk” from its portfolio, limited directional bets on individual sectors, and held shorts in unprofitable, growth-oriented companies, Bloomberg reported at the time. On the long side, in 2023 Viking held several Magnificent Seven stocks, whose outsize returns powered the market. But they were just a small part of Halvorsen’s portfolio. Payments giant Visa, up more than 25 percent in 2023, was Viking’s largest long position all year. Software company Workday was the second-biggest long at the end of the third quarter, and United Parcel Service moved into the No. 2 position in the fourth quarter.
12
William Ackman
Pershing Square Capital Management
$900 Million
Ackman became more of a household name when he led the recent charge to punish Harvard and other universities for turning a blind eye to threats to Jewish students and to widespread support for Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel. But his investors know him for generating a 26.3 percent return in 2023 — after losing 8.8 percent the previous year — despite mostly eschewing the tech and internet-related stocks that drove the market for more than a year. The only one Ackman’s firm held was Google parent Alphabet, which became Pershing Square’s third-largest equity position after its forward swaps were converted to shares in the third quarter. The stock surged some 60 percent in 2023, though Pershing did not own the shares for the full year. Its biggest winner was fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill, which soared 64 percent. It was the firm’s latest successful activist play. Other big winners were Hilton Worldwide Holdings, up 41 percent; Lowe’s Cos., up 21 percent; and Restaurant Brands, the Burger King and Popeye’s parent, up 17 percent. The only loss was a short bet on interest rates, which was closed out in October.
13
David Shaw
D.E. Shaw Group
$750 Million
It has been years since quant pioneer David Shaw has run the multistrategy firm on a day-to-day basis. But he still owns 70 percent of it. Once again, his main funds were among the best performers in their strategy. D.E. Shaw Composite Fund, the firm’s largest multistrategy fund, gained 9.6 percent in 2023. Oculus Fund, a macro-oriented multistrategy offering and D.E. Shaw’s second-largest strategy, returned an estimated 7.8 percent. The two funds, which are closed to new capital, returned virtually all of their 2023 profits to outside investors. The firm saw gains across its systematic, hybrid, and discretionary strategies. Altogether, D.E. Shaw still manages about $60 billion. Last year was a busy one for the firm. Its operation in India opened offices in Gurugram and Bengaluru. In August, D.E. Shaw began fundraising for its sixth Alkali Fund, a closed-end strategy that invests in private and public markets, primarily in credit, credit-related, and opportunistic assets. The firm also raised a combined $1.1 billion for two new private investment vehicles: D.E. Shaw Voltaic Fund and D.E. Shaw Diopter Fund.
14
Paul Singer
Elliott Management
$735 Million
Elliott posted a modest 4.7 percent gain last year. But that extended the multistrategy firm’s impressive streak of no down years since the financial crisis in 2008, when it dropped only 3 percent. Singer’s firm has had just two losing years since its 1977 inception. Elliott, best known for its high-profile activism, at year-end managed $65.5 billion and employed 570 people investing in a variety of strategies, including equity-oriented, private equity and private credit, distressed securities, nondistressed debt, hedge/arbitrage, real estate–related securities, commodities trading, and portfolio volatility protection. Last year, the firm launched at least 15 activist campaigns. In November, Elliott fired off a letter to wireless tower owner Crown Castle International threatening to nominate new directors and toss out the company’s executives and board members. It also called on the company to review its fiber strategy and consider a potential sale of that business. And late last year, Elliott settled with biotech company BioMarin Pharmaceutical; the company agreed to add three directors, temporarily expand the size of the board, and form a strategy review committee.
15
Scott Shleifer
Tiger Global Management
$700 Million
Scott Shleifer was celebrated for years for his role as a co-founder of Tiger Global’s private equity business, which at one time was doing more than a deal a day. But late last year, firm founder Chase Coleman announced that Shleifer would transition to senior adviser at the firm while remaining a partner. The announcement came as many private company valuations have declined, in some cases plummeting, and fundraising strategywide has become much more difficult. “Scott’s decision to make this move after two decades of successful partnership is based largely on geography,” Coleman wrote in a letter to clients, per Bloomberg. “Tiger Global is operating in person out of our New York offices, whereas Scott and his family have made their home in Florida and want to stay there.” Shleifer is among a small group who will sit on a newly formed investment committee for private investments, headed by Coleman. In 2022, Shleifer and his wife, Elena, gave $18 million to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
16
Karthik Sarma
SRS Investment Management
$600 Million
Car rental giant Avis Budget Group accounted for roughly half of SRS’s U.S.-listed assets for most of last year, but it didn’t drive the Tiger Global alum’s 25.4 percent gain as it was up just over 10 percent in 2023. Rather, SRS enjoyed huge gains from Netflix and Meta Platforms, its next-two-largest longs, accounting for about 20 percent of assets combined. Netflix surged 65 percent and Meta roughly tripled. The Indian-born Sarma founded SRS in 2007. He was previously a managing director at Tiger Global, which he joined within a few months of the 2001 launch, and before that worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and a master’s from Princeton. In 2021, Sarma made $2 billion as Avis rebounded from the pandemic.
17
Stephen Mandel Jr.
Lone Pine Capital
$500 Million
Mandel is another Tiger Cub who qualifies for the Rich List even though his 2023 gains failed to fully erase prior years’ losses. Lone Pine’s long-short fund rose 19 percent last year after losing 36 percent in 2022 and 7 percent in 2021. The long-only fund jumped 32 percent after dropping 42 percent in 2022. In the second half of the year, three of Lone Pine’s biggest longs were among the Magnificent Seven — Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft — accounting for 20 to 25 percent of U.S. common stock assets. However, those stocks played a lesser role in the first half, although Microsoft and Amazon were still the largest and third-largest longs, respectively, at the end of June. Mandel stepped back from day-to-day management of the funds several years ago but is still very much involved. Kelly Granat and Dave Craver lead the investment teams.
18
Ray Dalio
Bridgewater Associates
$400 Million
Dalio is no longer running the quantitatively driven macro giant he founded in 1975, but he remains on Bridgewater’s board, publishes research, and has adopted the title of “CIO mentor.” And he still owns 20 percent of the firm. Last year, Pure Alpha II’s 7.6 percent loss marred stronger performance elsewhere at the firm. Dalio wound up in a high-profile feud last year with New York Times reporter Rob Copeland, an II alum whose book The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend touched a nerve with the hedge world titan. Dalio, who asserts that Copeland wrote “fiction created as fact,” continues to fire off extensive political and economic missives.
19
Chris Rokos
Rokos Capital Management
$350 Million
What a turnaround for the macro maven. Rokos’s fund was down more than 15 percent at one point in March 2023 after losing money from bets on short-term interest rates when several U.S. financial institutions failed, including Silicon Valley Bank. Rokos brought down risk, and the move paid off: He was back in the black by the end of July and finished the year up 8.8 percent despite slumping 1 percent in December. The co-founder of hedge fund Brevan Howard, where he traded interest rates and generated about $4 billion in profits, he is well known for making big bets on the direction of rates. Rokos, who manages about $16 billion, launched his eponymous firm in 2015, counting Blackstone Group among the investors.
20
Larry Robbins
Glenview Capital Management
$330 Million
It was a roller-coaster year for Glenview, to say the least. After gaining 14 percent in the first half of 2023, it was down 1.5 percent as late as the end of October. But a two-month surge at year-end put the flagship Glenview Capital Partners fund up 17.4 percent for the year. Glenview Opportunity, a more concentrated fund, rose 11.7 percent. Robbins’s firm got a boost in the final two months from Amazon, which climbed 14 percent during the period, and two of its largest health care longs: Tenet Healthcare, an operator of hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers that represented 11 percent of assets, jumped more than 40 percent in November and December; and No. 4 long position Universal Health Services, which provides hospital and health care services, gained more than 20 percent. Another big winner during the late turnaround was Global Payments, a provider of payment technology and services, which rose nearly 20 percent. IT services and consulting company DXC Technology climbed 16 percent, and cloud-based tech specialist Alight advanced nearly 29 percent.
21
Nelson Peltz
Trian Fund Management
$325 Million
Peltz and Trian have been in the spotlight over the past few months for their nasty proxy fight with entertainment giant Disney, the firm’s largest investment, accounting for more than 40 percent of assets at year-end in an extremely concentrated portfolio. The stock rose a mere 4 percent in 2023, however; its big move has come since then. But don’t call Peltz an activist. He prefers “constructionist.” Either way, Trian gained 10 percent in 2023 after losing a bit more than that in 2022. So Peltz made all of his money from gains on his own capital in the fund. In 2023, Trian’s performance was fueled by British plumbing and heating products distributor Ferguson, the second-largest long for most of the year, which gained more than 50 percent. Asset management firm Janus Henderson rose about 30 percent. Those two stocks combined accounted for one-quarter of Trian’s assets at year-end.
22
Anthony Clake
Marshall Wace
$320 Million
Clake qualifies for the Rich List for the second straight year after Marshall Wace’s Trade Optimized Portfolio System posted a 7.7 percent gain in 2023. The firm’s third-largest owner, Clake is credited with developing the successful TOPS computer-driven strategy, which the long-short equity firm calls the world’s first “alpha capture” application. The fund is market-neutral and invests primarily in European equities, seeking to derive alpha from the stock ideas of European sell-side analysts. It has generated an annualized return of 9.3 percent since its 2007 inception. Roughly two-thirds of Marshall Wace’s $62.2 billion in assets at year-end was in systematic strategies, and about one-third of the 550 employees work in technology-related roles. Clake has long been a major financier of robots and other technology that hunts for treasures in shipwrecks, Bloomberg reported in November.
23
Joseph Edelman
Perceptive Advisors
$275 Million
Talk about a stunning recovery: Perceptive seemed well on its way to suffering its third straight significant losing year — having dropped 21 percent in 2021 and 26 percent in 2022 — when it was down more than 9 percent at the end of October. But the life sciences specialist, known for its wide swings in performance even during the best of times, started to recover in November as the broader strategy rallied and the fund then surged in December, finishing the year up 26 percent. As a result, Edelman snags a spot on the Rich List for the fifth time thanks solely to gains on his own capital. Perceptive benefited in part from the roughly 40 percent jump by Amicus Therapeutics, its largest long position for the first three quarters of the year, accounting for about 11 percent of assets. Cerevel Therapeutics, its biggest long at year-end, rocketed 58 percent in December after agreeing to be acquired by AbbVie for $45 a share.
24
(Tied)Paul MarshallIan Wace
Marshall Wace
$250 Million
Marshall and Wace made the Rich List for the third straight year after their equity-driven Eureka fund climbed 4.6 percent and Global Opportunity rose 7.6 percent, in addition to a 7.7 percent gain for TOPS. The Eureka strategy accounts for roughly one-third of the firm’s $62 billion in assets. Marshall handles the investing, and Wace runs the business side. “The best thing we ever did was recognize that Paul’s interest was in markets and my interest was in business-building, and that we allowed each other to develop in those spaces,” Wace told the Financial Times. “A defining characteristic of Marshall Wace is that I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to build this business . . . that’s really, really important in building a definable competitive advantage.” Marshall was a major supporter of Brexit; Wace was not. One person quoted in the FT article describes Wace, who did not attend university, as an “independent thinker, detail-oriented and savvy.” An acquaintance characterizes Marshall as a “very driven” trader who believes that “money is a way to change the world.” KKR owns 39.9 percent of the fast-growing firm.
