Billion Dollar Club fund assets shrink to $1.134 trillion, a loss of $541 billion since July. Bridgewater climbs to number one. Soros rejoins the top ten; Harbinger drops off
By Josh Friedlander
The devastation of 2008 has wiped two years' worth of asset gains from the largest hedge fund firms in the Western Hemisphere, leaving these giants with less than 70% of the assets they managed as recently as last July, with a total loss of $541 billion. The majority of firms watched their assets evaporate in 2008 amid a frenzy of poor performance and redemptions from wounded investors. Even those few firms with good performance lost significant cash as their investors, unable to redeem from troubled funds that invoked gates and suspended redemptions, used these rare winners as ATMs.
The Billion Dollar Club, Absolute Return's biannual survey of U.S. hedge fund assets, now includes 218 firms, each managing...