NEW YORK, April 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ray Dalio, whose Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest hedge fund firm, with $137 billion in assets, claims first place on Institutional Investor’s Rich List with $2 billion in earnings in 2018 — for the first time since his 2011 earnings propelled him to the No. 1 spot.
Jim Simons, the legendary founder of Renaissance Technologies, ranks second, having earned $1.5 billion. He remains the only person to qualify for the Rich List in all 18 years of its existence. Citadel’s Kenneth Griffin lands at No. 3 — with $870 million in personal earnings — followed by Two Sigma founders John Overdeck and David Siegel, who tie for No. 4 with $820 million each.
The 25 top-earning hedge fund managers took home a combined $11.15 billion in 2018 — a nearly 28 percent decrease from the previous year’s ranking and only a slight increase from two years ago, when the top 25 managers produced the lowest collective earnings since 2005. Roughly half of the people who qualified for last year’s top 25 ranking failed to make the list this year.
With so many of the Rich List regulars having lost money last year, all a manager needed to earn a place in this year’s ranking was $50.8 million — a steep decline from the $225 million required to qualify for the top 25 last year. Most of the top earners on this year’s list are multistrategy managers, quantitative managers, or fixed-income and debt specialists, reflecting what a difficult year 2018 was for equity-focused managers.
Each year, II determines the 25 hedge fund managers who personally earned the most money in a single year. We count gains on managers’ own capital invested in their funds, as well as shares of the firms’ total fees. When calculating the gains generated by managers’ own money, we do not take into consideration a high-water mark. In many cases, the gains on their capital play a major role in the ability of managers to qualify for the ranking — which was particularly true this year.
The full 2019 Rich List, including manager profiles, can be viewed at www.institutionalinvestor.com
The 2019 Rich List — Top Ten
| 1 | Ray Dalio (Bridgewater Associates) | $2 billion | ||
| 2 | James Simons (Renaissance Technologies) | $1.5 billion | ||
| 3 | Kenneth Griffin (Citadel) | $870 million | ||
| 4 | John Overdeck (Two Sigma) | $820 million | ||
| David Siegel (Two Sigma) | $820 million | |||
| 6 | Israel (Izzy) Englander (Millennium Management) | $750 million | ||
| 7 | Crispin Odey (Odey Asset Management) | $530 million | ||
| 8 | David Shaw (D.E. Shaw Group) | $500 million | ||
| 9 | Chase Coleman (Tiger Global Management) | $465 million | ||
| 10 | Alan Howard (Brevan Howard) | $390 million |
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Contact: Amanda Cantrell
Deputy editor, Institutional Investor
(212) 224-3324; acantrell@institutionalinvestor.com