Alternative Market Briefing

Forensic examination reveals surprising insights into the UK’s hedge fund industry

Friday, December 14, 2012

By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London:

A new hedge fund research consultancy Hedge Forensics, has published the first of two planned reports covering the UK hedge fund industry.

The UK Hedge Fund Industry Report reveals new insights into the size of the industry and its impact on the UK economy, while the Top 200 Report lists the top 200 hedge fund firms, ranked on a combination of size, profitability, efficiency, balance sheet, pay and growth.

Hedge Forensics’ Crosley Williams explains that these reports have been sourced primarily from UK Companies House filings, with the Hedge Forensics research team scouring over 1000 sets of company accounts to extract the information. The report gives a better picture of profitability on a comparable basis, Williams says. "The task has been complicated by firms changing year-ends, different lengths of accounting periods, different currencies, and most difficult of all, the use of complicated corporate structures, with Limited Liability Partnerships having Limited Service Companies as corporate members – the team has then had to create a pro-forma consolidated set of accounts in order to derive an accurate profit estimate."

Data for the UK industry report has been compiled from an analysis of the top 250 hedge fund firms in London. Williams reports: "They have a combined turnover of over £7bn ($11.28bn) and pretax profits of over £3bn ($4.83bn). They employ 8262 people, a l......................

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