Sizing up hedge funds 27 August 2014Atlanta Reporter: Catherine Van de Stouwe
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The US is the dominant supplier of reported hedge fund products (38 percent) and assets (53 percent), according to eVestment Sizing’s 2013 Hedge Fund and Fund of Hedge Funds (FoHF) Universe report.
The report by eVestment’s vice president, Peter Laurelli, highlights the importance of using multiple databases for industry analysis and gives a comprehensive look at the industry in terms of assets under management (AUM) and number of funds.
The UK followed the US with supplying 16 percent of hedge funds and 20 percent of assets.
Laurelli reports that China and Brazil are close behind the US and the UK for hedge funds, with China supplying 7 percent.
The comprehensive look at the reported hedge fund universe has provided further evidence of industry consolidation. While the absolute number of unique hedge funds declined in 2013 from 10,149 to 9,247, the size of the reported hedge fund industry increased by $248.8 billion to $2.664 trillion.
In this consolidation of hedge funds, firms with hedge fund AUM greater than $1 billion accounted for just over 83 percent of all reported AUM, but only 11.9 percent of all reporting firms.
As a result of the consolidation, and a shift towards large institutions by investors, databases are becoming more populated with large fund information. Laurelli’s report shows the number of reporting funds with greater than $1 billion in AUM increased by 13 percent and the number of those between $750 million -$1 billion increased 44 percent.
The growth that was reported in AUMs came from funds with greater than $750 million in AUM, where as AUMs smaller than $750 million declined.
There is a marked decline in FoFH with the number of FoFh and the number of those managing FoFH declining by 11 percent. The level of FoFH AUM declined by 3 percent
A decline has also been noted in the number of databases funds are reporting to with 64 percent reporting universe supply information to one database and 88 percent of funds reporting to three or less.
The report covers neatly 92,000 hedge funds, commodity trading advisor (CTA)/managed futures and FoFH products within 10 commercial datasets at the end of 2013, which are then compared to the prior year.
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