Richard Elden, a securities analyst at A.G. Becker & Co., pionered the development of the U.S.–based fund-of-hedge funds industry more than four decades ago with the $500,000 launch of Grosvenor Partners (just two years earlier, Georges Karlweis formed Geneva–based Leveraged Capital Holdings, the world’s first fund of hedge funds, which invested on behalf of the Rothschild family). The firm’s initial focus was managing convertible bonds and warrants for high-net-worth individuals and family offices. Grosvenor welcomed its first institutional client in 1978 and in the 1990s, the trend toward institutional investors accelerated. Today the Chicago–based fund-of-funds firm’s scope of strategies far exceeds its initial number. About 94 percent of its clients are institutional investors and 65 percent of the firm’s assets under management are placed in customized client portfolios…
