Large Hedge Funds with Interesting Founders/CEOs

Not every hedge fund has a manager who is a character in themselves or who does things a different way in how they lead their business to success. Most hedge funds today start with a few million in investment capital and grow from there. As their reputations grow, they often reach a point of needing to close the fund to new capital to preserve their high rate of return (there are only so many high-return investment opportunities).

Here are a small handful of hedge funds that break the mold and sing to their own tune rather than follow the herd.

Man Group

Jon Aisbitt runs the Man Group, a London, UK based investment company. He wasn’t the founder of the company, as it was started in 1783, but he’s led it to great success since taking the lead role. The current assets under management are over $75 billion, which puts it near the top of the most valuable hedge fund organizations.

The Man Group focuses primarily on unconventional assets like venture capital funds and other alternative investment assets rather than solely chasing after listed equity and bond investments on public markets. As such, the group doesn’t have a single hedge fund but offers a wide array of investment funds to private and institutional investors.

Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co.

Jeremy Grantham is the founder of GMO. It is a privately owned, Boston, USA-based organization that helps investors achieve outsized returns. The company is heavily focused on the valuations of different asset classes by looking at historical valuations, dividend levels compared to historical values, and other indicators to determine whether the asset is over-priced, fairly-valued, or undervalued.

Grantham has endured good and bad markets, having to hold the line as scores of investors jumped ship during the dot-com bubble. Many returned looking sheepish after their investments crashed and burned. The assets under management are close to $100 billion, but this figure fluctuates with the vagaries of the market and his latest market return estimates, which GMO publish quarterly.

Hillhouse Capital Management

Hillhouse Capital Management was founded by Lei Zhang, a Yale graduate who worked in their endowment fund investment office initially, then later at an emerging markets fund, before starting his own company. Believing in his investment thesis, the Yale Endowment Fund led by the highly-respected investor, David Swensen, put down $20 million as early seed capital to get the fund started. This is a common move that the endowment fund makes to encourage an entrepreneurial approach to investment management rather than putting money into the big names that usually disappoint.

The fund based in Beijing has been going since 2005, produced good income and returns over its time and currently has approximately $20 billion under management. You can learn more about this fund and the other prominent hedge funds from Investing PR.

Just because a hedge fund is large doesn’t mean it makes a great investment. Just ask Madoff. Due diligence is always required to ensure that investment capital is safely put to work with reliable hedge fund managers who are trustworthy and well-respected as the above funds clearly are.