A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals and others who are considered sufficiently sophisticated.
Private equity (PE) typically refers to investment funds, generally organized as limited partnerships, that buy and restructure companies. More formally, private equity is a type of equity and one of the asset classes consisting of equity securities and debt in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange.
D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. is a multinational investment management firm founded in 1988 by David E. Shaw and based in New York City. The company is known for developing complicated mathematical models and sophisticated computer programs to exploit anomalies in the financial market. D. E. Shaw & Co. manages $55 billion in AUM, $35 billion of which are alternative investments and the remaining $20 billion long-oriented investments. In 2018, Institutional Investor reported that among hedge funds, D. E. Shaw & Co. had delivered the fifth-highest returns in the world since its inception.
Investcorp is a global manager of alternative investment products, for private and institutional clients. Founded in 1982, the firm has offices in New York, London, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha, Mumbai and Singapore. Investcorp's principal client base is in the six countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council, but it also has institutional clients in North America, Europe and Asia.
Event-driven investing or Event-driven trading is a hedge fund investment strategy that seeks to exploit pricing inefficiencies that may occur before or after a corporate event, such as an earnings call, bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, or spinoff. In more recent times market practitioners have expanded this definition to include additional events such as natural disasters and actions initiated by shareholder activists. However, merger arbitrage remains the best-known investment strategy within this group.
A "fund of funds" (FOF) is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds or other securities. This type of investing is often referred to as multi-manager investment. A fund of funds may be "fettered", meaning that it invests only in funds managed by the same investment company, or "unfettered", meaning that it can invest in external funds run by other managers.
In finance, assets under management (AUM), sometimes called funds under management, measures the total market value of all the financial assets which an individual or financial institution—such as a mutual fund, venture capital firm, or depository institution—or a decentralized network protocol controls, typically on behalf of a client. These funds may be managed for clients/users or for themselves in the case of a financial institution which has mutual funds or holds its own venture capital. The definition and formula for calculating AUM may differ from one entity to another.
Man Group plc is an active management business initially founded as a sugar cooperage and brokerage by James Man in 1783. It provides a range of funds for institutional and private investors globally and is the world's largest publicly traded hedge fund company, reporting $117.7 billion in funds under management as of December 2019. The firm is headquartered at Riverbank House in London and employs over 1,000 people in various locations worldwide. The company was a sponsor of the arts and charitable initiatives, including the Man Booker Prize.
An alternative investment is an investment in any asset class excluding stocks, bonds, and cash. The term is a relatively loose one and includes tangible assets such as precious metals, collectibles and some financial assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, distressed securities, hedge funds, exchange funds, carbon credits, venture capital, film production, financial derivatives, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens. Investments in real estate, forestry and shipping are also often termed "alternative" despite the ancient use of such real assets to enhance and preserve wealth. Alternative investments are to be contrasted with traditional investments.
Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, frequently referred to as ABP, is the pension fund for government and education employees in the Netherlands. For the quarter ended 31 December 2014, ABP had 2.8 million participants and assets under management of €344 billion, making it the largest pension fund in the Netherlands and among the five largest pension funds in the world as at September 2016.
Man GLG is a discretionary investment manager and a wholly owned subsidiary of British alternative investment manager Man Group plc. It is a diversified and multi-strategy fund manager that operates strategies including equity long-short funds, convertible arbitrage funds, emerging market funds and long-only mutual funds. The firm is also a founding member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board and a signatory of the Principles for Responsible investment. As of December 31, 2020, Man GLG had $30.4 billion assets under management.
Brevan Howard is a European hedge fund management company based in Jersey with its funds domiciled in the Cayman islands. The company was co-founded by Alan Howard and four others in 2002. It was once described as one of the largest "macro hedge funds" in the world with $40 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of October 2013 before downsizing to $18 billion in 2016. As of June 2019, the firm manages $7 billion. By September 2020, the fund was managing around $10-billion in investor assets across its six offices globally.
Highbridge Capital Management, LLC is a multi-strategy alternative investment management firm founded by Glenn Dubin and Henry Swieca in 1992. In 2004, it was purchased by JPMorgan Chase; as of 2019, it had about $3.9 billion in assets under management, out of $150 billion in JPMorgan's global alternatives division.
Samena Capital is an Asia, India and MENA-focused alternative investments group, co-established in 2008 by Shirish Saraf and key partners from a cross section of industries and regions. This name was chosen due to the markets that Samena invests in. These are the Indian Subcontinent, Asia, Middle East and North Africa – a region collectively known as SAMENA. Also in ancient Buddhist script, Samena means "together" or "collective", which reflects the collective investment model the company is based on. The company and its subsidiaries employ 26 people in 3 locations worldwide, and has 48 shareholders.
Millennium Management is an investment management firm with a multistrategy hedge fund offering. It is one of the world's largest alternative asset management firms with $48.3 billion assets under management. The firm operates in America, Europe and Asia.
Pine River Capital Management L.P. is an asset management firm. The firm trades stocks, fixed income, derivatives and warrants. As of 2018 the company manages approximately US$7 billion across three actively managed platforms: hedge funds, managed accounts and listed investment vehicles to support a number of strategies including interest rates, mortgages, equity long/short, event-driven equity, and global convertible bond arbitrage. The company is currently managed by founder and CEO Brian Taylor and 6 partners.
Blue Harbour Group was an American investment firm that managed capital for pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, labor unions and other institutional investors. The company was based in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Quantedge Capital is an alternative investment asset manager based in Singapore and New York City. It manages over US$3 billion under its flagship Quantedge Global Fund primarily on behalf of high-net-worth individuals, family offices and institutions.
Aspect Capital is a London-based investment manager that applies a systematic and quantitative approach to investment management. According to the Financial Times, Aspect uses "technology and complex mathematical models to power computers that trade the world's markets around the clock". Aspect manages USD6.6bn.
