The hedge fund industry produced its best returns of the past five years in 2017 — but several managers outshone their peers even by those standards.
The average hedge fund returned 8.5 percent last year, according to data tracker HFR. Christopher Hohn beat that handily — by nearly 20 percentage points, in fact. His firm TCI Fund Management produced a gain of 28.3 percent in its flagship hedge fund, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha, one of several reasons TCI is being nominated for Institutional Investor and Institutional Investor’s Alpha’s 16th annual Hedge Fund Industry Awards.
TCI is a finalist in both the Activist Hedge Fund Manager and Institutional Hedge Fund Manager categories. In the activist category, TCI is joined by Mick McGuire’s Marcato Capital Management, whose Marcato International fund gained about 26 percent last year, according to a document from investment bank HSBC that tracks hedge fund performance. Rounding out the category are Starboard Value, Toscafund Asset Management, and ValueAct Capital Management.
The Institutional Hedge Fund Manager category isn’t all about the activists this year, however. Other finalists in the category are multi-strategy firms Citadel and Millennium Management, as well as credit-oriented firm Canyon Partners. One of the best-performing hedge fund strategies last year was long-short equity, as demonstrated by a strong lineup of equity manager finalists this year.
Among them: Joseph Edelman’s Perceptive Advisors, whose biotechnology-oriented Perceptive Life Sciences Fund produced a hefty 40 percent gain last year. That same strategy propelled one of this year’s top-performing firms in the Emerging Hedge Fund Manager category: EcoR1 Capital. The firm, founded by former BVF Partners portfolio manager Oleg Nodelman, produced a soaring 52.6 percent gain last year.
Institutional Investor begins the voting process with a public call for nominations; the editorial staff concurrently develops a list of candidates based on its knowledge of the firms and institutions and discussions with its wide network of industry sources. The staff then vets each of the nominations, as well as its internally generated candidates, based on how strongly it believes the candidates meet a wide range of criteria for their respective categories.
Once the nominees are publicly announced, the magazine group conducts a wide survey of U.S. institutional investors and invites them to vote for the manager nominees. The winners will be announced at a gala dinner and ceremony at the Mandarin Oriental in New York on June 28.
For more information about the dinner or to request a ballot, please visit the event web site.
In the coming days, Institutional Investor will announce the Hedge Fund Allocator Finalists, as well as two industry Lifetime Achievement honorees. The Hedge Fund Rising Stars — a list of 30 rising stars in the hedge fund industry, also honored at the dinner — will be revealed at the end of the month.
Following is a complete list of the 2018 hedge fund manager finalists. The list can also be found on the Hedge Fund Industry Awards web site.
Institutional Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Canyon Partners
Citadel
Millennium Management
TCI Fund Management
Third Point
Emerging Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
EcoR1 Capital
Lunia Capital
Melvin Capital Management
SQN Investors
Suvretta Capital Management
Large Fund-of-Hedge-Funds Manager of the Year
Blackstone Group
K2 Advisors
Morgan Stanley Investment Management
Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co.
Rock Creek Group
Boutique Fund-of-Hedge-Funds Manager of the Year
Gapstow Capital Partners
Greenlight Masters
Ironwood Capital Management
Morgan Creek Capital Management
Silver Creek Capital Management
Outsourced CIO of the Year
Cambridge Associates
Goldman Sachs Asset Management
HighVista Strategies
Partners Capital
Perella Weinberg Partners
Hedge Fund GP Investor of the Year
Blackstone Group
Dyal Capital Partners
Paloma Partners
Reservoir Capital Group
Schonfeld Strategic Advisors
Equity-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Coatue Management
Impala Asset Management
Light Street Capital
Perceptive Advisors
Tiger Global Management
Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Chatham Asset Management
Marathon Asset Management
MidOcean Credit Partners
Napier Park Global Capital
Silver Point Capital
Hybrid Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Cerberus Capital Management
Drawbridge Special Opportunities Funds/Fortress Investment Group
Valiant Capital Management
Viking Global Opportunities
Vivo Capital
Multistrategy Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Canyon Partners
Citadel
D.E. Shaw Composite Fund
Elliott Management Corp.
Millennium Management
Relative-Value Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Citadel Global Fixed Income Fund
One William Street Capital Management
Paloma Partners
Pimco Tactical Opportunities Fund
Waterfall Asset Management
Activist Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Marcato Capital Management
Starboard Value
TCI Fund Management
Toscafund Asset Management
ValueAct Capital Management
Event-Driven Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Elliott Management
Gates Capital Management
Owl Creek Asset Management
P. Schoenfeld Asset Management
Strategic Value Partners
Macro Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
Element Capital Management
Emerging Markets Special Opportunities
Haidar Capital Management
Massar Capital Management
Pharo Management
Quantitative Hedge Fund Manager of the Year
D.E. Shaw Group
Man AHL Evolution
PDT Partners
Renaissance Technologies
Two Sigma
