Marshall Wace Jumps to Top of Institutional Investor's Alpha Hedge Fund Report Card

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2016) - When it comes to pleasing their investors, hedge funds need to do one thing above all else: make money. That's according to the results of Institutional Investor's Alpha's latest Hedge Fund Report Card survey.

Most of the top funds on this year's Report Card produced strong returns for their investors in 2015. But while performance is the most important factor when judging a hedge fund, according to survey respondents, it's not the only thing. Risk management and alignment of interests are also among the most important factors, and hedge fund managers also need to do well in nonperformance categories to earn a high score on the Report Card.

London hedge fund firm Marshall Wace soars from No. 26 to No. 1 this year. The firm posted double-digit gains in two of its funds last year. KKR & Co. acquired a 24.9 percent stake in the global long-short specialist last summer. Investors also gave the firm high marks for risk management, transparency and infrastructure, among other factors.

This year, 12 firms scored an A grade, with most of these firms also scoring high marks in the areas of risk management and infrastructure.

Rounding out the top five are:

• The Children's Investment Fund Management UK: The London-based activist firm headed by Chris Hohn scored highly for performance, alignment of interests and transparency, among other factors.
• Adage Capital Management: Investors rewarded the Boston-based firm for its highly favorable fee terms, ranking them No. 1 for alignment of interests.
• Citadel: Kenneth Griffin's firm got an A in six categories, including alpha generation, having posted a fifth-straight year of double-digit gains in its flagship multistrategy funds.
• Two Sigma: The New York-based firm founded by former D.E. Shaw colleagues John Overdeck and David Siegel has posted strong gains in its main funds over the past two years; employs a quantitative, computer-driven strategy.

The bottom four firms, all of which took home an F on the report card, are:

• Brevan Howard Asset Management: The big UK-based macro firm co-founded by Alan Howard just posted its second consecutive losing year in its flagship hedge fund.
• Perry Capital: Event-driven and merger arbitrage specialist Richard Perry's New York firm lost money for a second straight year, in a booming year for mergers and acquisitions.
• Greenlight Capital: David Einhorn's firm lost 20 percent last year in its main fund and scored poorly in alpha generation, investor relations and liquidity.
• BlueCrest Capital Management: Michael Platt's UK-based firm, which is returning capital to outside investors, only posted slight losses in its flagship fund and slight gains in others, but investors gave it poor marks for alignment of interests and transparency, among other factors.

The full Hedge Fund Report Card ranking is available in the Winter 2016 edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha and online for subscribers at www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com.

Survey results reflect the opinions of pension funds, endowments, foundations, funds of funds and other institutional investors. Each year we ask these investors to rate the firms in our annual Hedge Fund 100 ranking of the world's largest hedge funds. Only investors that had money in the 100 hedge fund firms in the 12 months before polling are surveyed.

Investors were asked to grade the firms on eight different attributes (alpha generation, risk management, alignment of interests, infrastructure, transparency, independent oversight, investor relations, and liquidity terms). They were also asked to rate the importance of these factors; the higher a factor rank, the heavier it was weighted in the overall scoring process. For the fourth straight year, investors ranked alpha generation, risk management and alignment of interests as the three most important factors when grading a hedge fund.

For more information, visit the 2016 Hedge Fund Report Card.

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 close to 50 years. Visit www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com for more information.