NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Sep 3, 2014) - The four newest members of the Institutional Investor's Alpha Hedge Fund Hall of Fame have made an indelible impact on the hedge fund industry, and most are continuing to make groundbreaking contributions to the business, the publication's Summer 2014 issue reveals.
The newest Hedge Fund Hall of Fame members are Richard Elden, a Chicago native who created the first U.S.-based fund of hedge funds more than 40 years ago; David Harding, the Winton Capital Management founder who pioneered the use of computers -- and the scientific method -- in trading; J. Tomlinson Hill, the Wall Street veteran who brings an investment banker's perspective to the fund-of-funds business; and Richard Perry, longtime risk arbitrageur who left Goldman Sachs to form Perry Capital in 1988.
"Each of our inductees shares a flair for thinking outside the box," says Institutional Investor Editor Michael Peltz. "They are all, in their own ways, iconoclasts."
This year marks the third iteration of the Alpha Hedge Fund Hall of Fame, which the publication inaugurated in 2008 with 14 legendary investors, including Kenneth Griffin of Citadel, Julian Robertson Jr. of Tiger Management, James Simons of Renaissance Technologies Corp. and George Soros of Soros Fund Management. Last year, seven additional members joined the roster, including Bridgewater Associates founder Raymond Dalio, Elliott Management founder Paul Singer and Appaloosa Management founder David Tepper.
This year's Hedge Fund Hall of Fame features rare, on-the-record interviews with each of the new inductees, who offer in-depth insights on how they got started in the business and the paths their varied and accomplished careers have taken. The interviews are available in the Summer 2014 edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha and online for subscribers at www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com.
Elden started Grosvenor Partners in 1971 with just $500,000 and helped grow it to $13.5 billion as of his 2005 departure. Today Grosvenor manages more than $46 billion, and the fund-of-hedge-funds industry that Elden helped to create has an estimated 1,760 funds managing $672 billion, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research.
Richard Perry left a plum job on a dream team -- the fabled merger arbitrage desk at Goldman, Sachs & Co. -- at age 30 to start his eponymous hedge fund firm. He has since built Perry Capital into an $11 billion hedge fund powerhouse that invests across a range of eclectic investment styles. Perry also helped launch the careers of several other hedge fund luminaries, including Farallon Capital's Thomas Steyer, Och-Ziff Capital Management's Daniel Och and Eton Park Capital Management's Eric Mindich.
As head of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, 66-year-old Tom Hill oversees $62 billion in discretionary assets, making BAAM the largest allocator to hedge funds in the world. Under Hill, BAAM has been a pioneer, moving the fund-of-hedge-funds industry from one-size-fits-all approach to more-customized investment solutions. The firm continues to innovate, launching a fund that takes stakes in hedge fund firms and providing seed capital to early-stage managers.
David Harding, founder of London-based Winton Capital Management, has achieved fame and fortune by creating and running two of the world's largest and most successful commodity trading advisers. His hunch that applying mathematical techniques and computer trading to financial markets could generate alpha on a repeatable basis proved correct at his first hedge fund firm, AHL, which was later acquired by Man Group. He then went on to launch Winton with $10 million, growing it into a $25 billion operation. Today, Harding is plotting Winton's expansion, applying the firm's trading systems beyond managed futures to other asset classes.
To view the complete Hedge Fund Hall of Fame including manager profiles and in-depth interviews, visit the Hedge Fund Hall of Fame.
About Institutional Investor's Alpha
Institutional Investor's Alpha is a leading provider of news, analysis and rankings for the hedge fund industry, delivering the most insightful, entertaining and authoritative published content about hedge funds online and in print. Alpha is a publication of Institutional Investor, a leading financial publishing and information company for more than 40 years. Visit www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com for more information.
