About Us
AR Magazine, a thought leader for the hedge fund industry, delivers the most insightful, entertaining and authoritative published content about hedge funds online and in print.
The service was born out of two Euromoney Institutional Investor titles - Alpha and Absolute Return, which merged together to create AR combining the strengths of both.
AR is a must-read for anyone hoping to keep ahead of the curve in the world of hedge funds, bringing transparency and accountability to a secretive industry that is playing a growing role in the financial markets and for institutional investors.
While AR concentrates on the American hedge fund industry, which manages about 75% of global hedge fund assets, the magazine also covers important developments in the rest of the world’s developed and developing markets.
Research & Rankings AR’s proprietary surveys include the Billion
Dollar Club, our twice-yearly ranking of all hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets under management, and The
Rich List, an annual ranking of the top 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers. We also chart the size and frequency of new fund launches, prime brokerage market share, philanthropic giving among hedge fund managers, hedge fund employee compensation, and how institutional investors rank hedge funds based on operations and other criteria.
Data Subscribers benefit from a database containing information on U.S. single-manager hedge funds. The database has over 3,500 funds listed and 86% of the Billion Dollar Club funds. We allow you to research quantitative and qualitative information in the same place, at the touch of a button.
Subscribers can also benefit from a database that contains information on more than 3,500 American hedge funds, allowing them to research quantitative and qualitative information in the same place, at the touch of a button. We have rolled news and data together, enabling subscribers to search for individual funds and managers—track their performance history and relevant news reports from our archives. You can also benefit from our independent analysis of performance and strategy. Searches by fund name, performance, category, manager, asset size, inception date and many other categories make it easy to pull out just the information you need.
AR Events
Held in New York every fall since 2004, the AR Symposium is a major hedge fund event which attracts the industry's elite from around the globe. The Symposium offers incisive and topical content about hedge fund strategies and also addresses the overall outlook for the hedge fund industry and financial markets, as well as the opportunities, challenges and risks across a range of investment strategies.
The AR Awards, held every year in November, are the industry standard, as awards are granted based on a purely quantitative methodology.
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The Editorial Team
General editorial enquiries can be sent to editorial@absolutereturn.net . Alternatively you can contact a member of the team individually. AR does accept outside editorial submissions for its Unhedged Commentary columns. Please contact us with your idea before submitting a draft.
Michelle Celarier has been the editor of AR since launch in September 2009, leading the magazine to win the ASBPE gold award for best new publication of 2009. She has been writing about the financial industry since 1983, both in New York and in Europe. Before joining AR’s predecessor, Absolute Return, as the editor in 2005, she had been the editor of Investment Dealers Digest, the U.S. editor of Euromoney magazine, and European editor of Global Finance magazine, where she was the recipient of the ASBPE award for the best article of the year for her expose, “Gangster Economics,” about organized crime in Russian finance following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Michelle’s articles have appeared in the New York Times' Dealbook and Newsday, and she has been quoted in various media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Newsweek and the Associated Press as well as appearing on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” and “Squawk Box.” Michelle’s work has appeared in numerous books and academic studies, including the Columbia University Journal of International Affairs, on topics ranging from corruption in privatization and money laundering to the dangers of leverage in finance. She was the recipient of a fellowship leading to a master’s degree in business and economics journalism at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Amanda Cantrell – Managing Editor, AR Magazine
Amanda Cantrell is the managing editor of AR. She has covered hedge funds for more than eight years, most recently serving as the deputy editor of EuroHedge, the HedgeFund Intelligence publication that focuses exclusively on the European hedge fund industry. She worked on AR’s predecessor, Absolute Return, as a senior writer and has also been a staff writer for CNNMoney.com and HedgeFund.net. She has appeared as a commentator on hedge funds on ABC World News and has also contributed freelance articles to a variety of publications including The New York Times, Cosmopolitan and Pop Culture Press. She holds a master's degree in journalism from New York University, where she has also worked as an adjunct professor.
Josh Friedlander manages editorial content for the AR web site, with specific responsibility for breaking news and opinion pieces, email alerts and the AR Weekly newsletter. He previously served as Research Editor for AR's predecessor magazine, Absolute Return. He joined from Investment Dealers' Digest, a weekly magazine covering Wall Street and had previously reported on Wall Street and the pension industry for Institutional Investor News. He sits on the board of governors of the New York Financial Writers' Association, the nation's oldest organization devoted to business and financial journalism, where he served as President for 2009. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Connecticut College. In 2007, he was selected as one of the "30 under 30" most promising young business journalists by Newsbios.com.
Jan Alexander –
Senior Writer, AR Magazine
Jan Alexander was previously a features editor at Worth Magazine, where she oversaw coverage of hedge funds, global markets, corporate board governance, and philanthropy. She has also written for Institutional Investor, Forbes Woman, CBS BNET, Newsweek International, The Wall Street Journal and Money. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas and a master’s degree in International Affairs with a concentration on Asian studies from Columbia University, and has been an adjunct professor of Chinese studies at Brooklyn College in addition to publishing a novel about business intrigue in China. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the New York Financial Writers Association.
Rob Copeland – Staff Writer, AR Magazine
Rob Copeland is a staff writer for AR, primarily covering breaking news but also contributing features to the magazine. He has written about corporate finance for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Dow Jones Newswires and The Charlotte Observer. Before joining AR, he was a founding writer for NewsCore, the News Corp. global wire service, where his work appeared in The New York Post and FOX News, among others. Rob graduated from Duke University with a BA in Economics and History.
Prior to joining Absolute Return, Britt Erica Tunick was a senior editor for Alpha magazine, and before that spent several years covering a wide range of beats for Investment Dealers' Digest. Her other experience includes a two year stint in London where she reported on European and U.K. startups for EO News and freelanced for Euromoney Magazine, the Sunday Business and the Financial Times. Other positions have included Securities Week, The Bond Buyer and Financial Markets Daily. Britt has a BA in English/Journalism from Pepperdine University and an MA in Public Affairs Reporting from the American University School of Communication. She was the 2006/2007 president of the New York Financial Writers’ Association and remains a member of its board of governors.
Lawrence Delevingne is a staff writer for AR. He primarily writes for the website, but also contributes features to the magazine. Lawrence was most recently a staff writer at Business Insider, mostly covering finance and white-collar crime. He has also written for Fortune and BusinessWeek. Prior to journalism, Lawrence worked in communications, specializing in corporate responsibility. He holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown, he studied international affairs, focusing on Africa.
Anastasia Donde joined AR in January 2010 and contributes features and profiles to the magazine. She previously spent four years at Institutional Investor News as a reporter and editor for Money Management Letter, covering pension funds and institutional asset management. She has been contributing freelance profiles to Alpha and AR since May 2009. She has also written articles for Amsco Publications’ education books and Show Business Weekly, a theater industry newspaper. She holds a BA in English/Journalism from Baruch College, with minors in Political Science and French.
Irwin Speizer has more than two decades of experience as a writer and editor in business and finance for magazines, newspapers and web sites. He has been a contributing writer to Alpha, Workforce Management and Business North Carolina magazines. He has also been published in Institutional Investor, Fast Company, Worthwhile, On Wall Street and other magazines. In the newspaper field, he covered banking and general business for the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.; served as business editor of the Fresno Bee in Fresno, Calif.; and covered Congress and federal agencies in Washington, D.C. for the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin.