Egerton Capital
John Armitage’s equities house has one of the most impressive long-term track records in the industry. His flagship hedge fund has annualised at 16% over 16 years. The firm has branched out into Ucits, and in June hired Jeff Blumberg from Goldman Sachs Asset Management as chief executive.

Lansdowne Partners
Lansdowne raised over $800m of mainly institutional money last year and two of its three hedge funds are now closed to new money. Its UK equities fund hasn’t had a down year since launching a decade ago. In late 2009 TCI founding partner Patrick Degorce joined the platform to launch Thélème Partners.

Nevsky Capital
Pioneers in emerging markets, Martin Taylor and Nick Barnes’s flagship hedge fund has annualised at 25% since launching in September 2000 - double that of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. When they relaunched it earlier this year, the fund was four to five times subscribed.

Odey Asset Management
Founder Crispin Odey’s hedge fund fell 0.11% last year but investors know to expect a bumpy ride. The fund has annualised at over 15%. A Ucits hedge fund managed by James Hanbury is up 52% since it launched in May 2009. Odey hired Tim Bond, the former head of global asset allocation at Barclays Capital.

Pelham Capital
Former Lansdowne partner Ross Turner launched Pelham in November 2007 with $57m. Institutional inflows have taken firm assets to $1.6bn, and one of its two main share classes is closed to new money. The fund returned 13.54% last year, after gaining 26.69% in 2009 and dropping 9.42% in 2008.

Centaurus Capital
After being forced by an investor vote to wind down its flagship multi-strategy fund during 2008, this merger arbitrage specialist has fought back. It has launched five individual funds, built around different themes and liquidity exposures. Performance has returned and the firm has raised over $1bn in its new guise.

Cheyne Capital
This event-driven fund, led by Simon Davies, gained 20.48% in 2010, its first calendar year. The fund has grown from $10m to about $280m since it launched, with further commitments of over $50m. Cheyne manages roughly $4.7bn in hedge funds.

Omni Partners
This firm’s global event-driven fund, which trades after a deal announcement, hasn’t had a down year since it launched in 2001. It gained 15.3% in 2008, 11.8% in 2009 and 7.8% last year. The $650m fund has been closed to new money but has just reopened to raise another $250m.

Tyrus Capital
The largest European launch of 2009, the fund gained 10.8% in its first calendar year, and is raising a second fund. Investors praised founder Tony Chedraoui’s high-conviction approach to running a concentrated portfolio.

York Capital
The London arm of Jamie Dinan’s US firm, which manages the York European Focus fund, has posted solid returns in the past two years, gaining 46.8% in 2009 and 10.7% the following year. In September, Credit Suisse bought a 30% stake in York, opening up the event-driven specialist to the bank’s client base.

Aspect Capital
Aspect’s flagship medium-term trend-following systematic strategy has gained 10.47% on an annualised basis since it launched, returning 15.36% in 2010. The firm, which was founded by Michael Adam and Martin Lueck, has grown assets from $3.6bn at the start of 2010 to $4.3bn.

BlueCrest Capital Management
BlueTrend, the $12.3bn computer-driven programme developed by BlueCrest president Leda Braga, gained 15.98% last year. Its annualised performance of 17.93% since it launched in 2004 makes it the best-performing of the large managed futures strategies over the long term.

Brummer & Partners Lynx
This Swedish firm’s $3.8bn systematic trend-following strategy, which is diversified by markets and trading timeframes, gained 18.54% in 2010 and has annualised at 15.72%. In February of this year Brummer teamed up with Deutsche Bank to launch a Ucits-compliant version of the strategy.

Transtrend
This subsidiary of Robeco, the Dutch fund group, has solid performance, with only two down years since it launched in 1992. The standard risk profile of its $9.3bn flagship Diversified Trend Program gained 8.84% in 2010 and has annualised at 10.73% since inception.

Winton Capital
David Harding’s systematic long-term trend-following programme is supported by over 90 researchers. The Winton Diversified Program has grown assets from $12.5bn at the end of 2009 to $20bn and it has annualised at 17% since 1997. In June it won a mandate from the UK's Pension Protection Fund, and last year it also diversified into Ucits.

Brummer & Partners Nektar
After a small loss in 2008, Nektar, this Swedish firm’s fixed-income relative-value fund led by Kent Janer, gained 38% in 2009 and 16% last year. In 2009, Nektar launched a special opportunity fund to take advantage of mispricing in bonds resulting from the financial crisis. The fund gained 8.58% last year.

Capula
Led by chief investment officer Yan Huo, Capula has consistently performed over the past three years. Its relative value fund gained 10% in 2008, 12.25% in 2009 and 10% in 2010. A mandate from China’s sovereign-wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, helped Capula grow assets in the fund from $4.25bn in 2008 to $6bn.

CQS
An asset-backed securities fund managed by Ali Lumsden has posted annualised performance of 37.8% since its inception in October 2006, including gains of 19.2% last year. A new distressed debt fund that launched in June, managed by Mark Unferth, gained 10.15% in the remainder of 2010.  

Pamplona Capital Management
Pamplona hired Yves Leysen, head of fixed income in Europe at Bear Stearns, and a six-strong team to launch a credit fund in September 2008. Since then the fund has roughly doubled assets to about $450m. It gained 14.9% in 2010 and has returned 23.13% annualised since inception.

Pelagus Capital
This relative value fund, run by a team at Mako Investment Managers led by Bruno Usai, has posted three years of solid investment gains: returning 33.1% in 2008, 23.9% in 2009 and 12.2% last year. The $879m fund was closed to new money for most of 2010.

BlueCrest Capital Management
BlueCrest International, this manager’s $8.3bn flagship fixed income global macro hedge fund led by founder Mike Platt, almost doubled in size over the course of 2010. It finished the year up 12.77%, after gaining 6.26% in 2008 and 45.39% in 2009.

Brevan Howard Asset Management
The firm has its pick of prop traders leaving investment banks and it has been actively hiring. After two years of stellar gains in 2008 and 2009, returns in the flagship fund were more subdued last year but Brevan Howard still managed to preserve investors’ capital.

Comac Capital
Investors had to put up with underperformance last year from Colm O’Shea’s Comac. But this followed gains of 30.7% in 2008 and 14.9% in 2009. Mandate wins from heavyweights such as the New York State Common Retirement Fund have helped Comac boost assets from $1.3bn in 2008 to $6bn.

GLG Partners
Whlle many of its larger rivals underperformed in 2010, GLG’s Atlas Macro Fund, managed by Driss Ben-Brahim, delivered 25% to investors. Bart Turtelboom and Karim Abdel-Motaal’s emerging markets fund has gained over 60% since they took over managing it in November 2008, without the high volatility often associated with funds that invest in emerging markets.

Moore Capital
Moore Macro Managers fund has had three consecutive years of positive performance, including 11.56% in 2010, a year the fund grew $890m to $4.3bn. Annualised performance is about 15%. Last year the London office, headed by Greg Coffey, welcomed back former managing director Maurizio Alfano, who left in 2002, as head of fixed income in Europe.

Boston and Alexander
Rory Passey is the lead manager on the Boston and Alexander Number One Fund, which last year secured backing from Dutch seeding platform IMQubator. It has a track record going back to January 2004, over which it has annualised 6.78%. It gained 8.55% in the 12 months to the end of January.

Boussard & Gavaudan
This €1.3bn asset manager, which is listed in London and Amsterdam, rebounded from performance losses in 2008 to gain 25.13% in 2009 and 9.56% the following year in its multi-asset corporate arbitrage fund. The firm has offices in London, Paris and Hong Kong.

CQS
Unlike many of its rivals, CQS didn’t gate investors or restrict redemptions from its Convertible and Quantitative Strategies Fund, run by founder Michael Hintze, when the convertibles market froze up in 2008. Performance rebounded in 2009 for the fund, which gained 32.1% that year, followed by 8% in 2010.

GLG Partners
Steve Roth’s market neutral fund - one of GLG’s oldest, with a track record dating back to 1998 - returned 33.59% in 2010, making it the top performer of the largest convertibles hedge funds in Europe. It has annualised at over 16% since inception.

Jabre Capital
Philippe Jabre’s convertibles hedge fund was one of the top-performing of its kind in 2009, gaining almost 70%. In 2010 it returned 8.45%, and in February last year Geneva-based Jabre launched a Ucits-compliant convertible bond fund with Swiss private bank Pictet, which hit its €800m capacity just nine days after launch.

BlueCrest Capital Management
BlueCrest’s $5.4bn multi-strategy fund AllBlue, which allocates across a range of in-house funds, ended 2010 up 8.16%. The London-listed version of the strategy has held three successful fundraisings in the past 18 months, including raising £349m in June.

Brevan Howard Asset Management
Last year saw Alan Howard’s firm branch into systematic trading, launch a stand-alone commodities hedge fund, and raise $160m for a listed credit fund on the London Stock Exchange. It posted positive performance in 2010 across all of its largest funds.

Brummer & Partners
Sweden’s largest hedge fund grew assets by over 40% in 2010. The firm, which affords individual managers investment autonomy but provides them with infrastructure and seed capital, signed a deal in 2010 to back Benros Capital, an event-driven startup founded by a team of former Goldman Sachs prop traders.

CQS
In December, CQS successfully listed its CQS Diversified Fund on the London Stock Exchange. The fund, which allocates across a range of in-house strategies, gained 14.6% last year and has annualised at 10.4% since launching in March 2007.  CQS’s multi-strategy directional opportunities fund gained 31.4% in 2010.

GLG Partners
This $26.2bn manager, which was bought by Man Group, runs a fund of internal portfolios, led by Luke Ellis, who it hired from Financial Risk Management early last year. The fund delivered 12.24% in 2010.  Notable strong performance last year also came from Galia Velimukhametova’s European distressed debt fund, which was up 35.74%.

Aurum Funds
Consultants said that this manager is small but stable. It has avoided frauds, blowups and liquidity problems, and has had no change in senior management since it started in 1994. Mandate wins in the past 18 months from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and insurance companies have boosted assets to $2bn.

Caliburn Capital Partners
This Mizuho International-backed firm runs three portfolios, which each gained 5-6% last year. Asia is a growing area for the firm, which is playing the themes of commodities and emerging markets. Assets under management grew 35% in 2010 and Caliburn has raised an additional $50m this year.

Culross
Consultants praised Culross’ thematic approach and its superior investment team, led by founder Nigel Blanshard. They’ve ensured that the fund has substantially outperformed its peers over one, three, five and 10 years.

International Asset Management
Consultants said this manager is in a good position to capitalise on increasing demand from institutional investors for bespoke portfolios, given its performance record in this area going back to 1989. The firm has been strengthening its New York office and raised $200m of net new money last year.

Thames River Capital
Veteran fund of funds manager Ken Kinsey-Quick bypasses the largest funds, preferring to invest in those with fewer than $1bn in assets. The firm also runs a multi-strategy fund of funds focusing on Africa and the Middle East.

AP1
In June one of the largest Swedish pension schemes began searching for hedge funds to manage up to Skr14.4bn (€1.5bn) of its Skr202.4bn in assets. This new allocation would more than double the fund’s alternatives holding, which was around 5% of the fund at the end of 2009.

APG Asset Management
The manager for Holland’s largest pension fund, Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, APG backed Dutch incubation business IMQubator Investment Management to encourage startup managers to set up shop in the Netherlands. IMQubator recently signed a deal to seed CIAM, a Paris-based merger arbitrage boutique. New Holland Capital in New York runs a portfolio of hedge fund investments for ABP.

BT/Hermes BPK
The largest private sector pension scheme in the UK manages $1.3bn in funds of hedge funds in partnership with Hermes BPK, led by chief executive Matteo Dante Perruccio. Investors said it is a market leader in good corporate governance and shareholder engagement.

PGGM Investments
The €110bn Dutch scheme is increasing its hedge fund allocation from 3% to 5%. It has pulled out of funds of funds and is going direct, launching its own dedicated managed account platform for hedge fund investments.

USS
The £31.5bn Universities Superannuation Scheme is looking to invest in a seeding fund, which takes stakes in a number of hedge funds in return for a share in profits. It will also use the stakes to improve corporate governance of the hedge funds in which the seeding funds invest.

Edoma Partners
Edoma, founded by former head of Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies Pierre-Henri Flamand, raised $1.5bn for the largest European launch of 2010 and is already closed to new money.

Frey Quantitative Strategies
One of a tiny minority of fund of funds to brave launching in 2010, this new venture was seeded by Robert Frey, a former managing director at Renaissance Technologies Corp. The firm’s advanced quantitative screening process belies its $105m under management.

Ridley Park Capital
Julian Barnett, formerly a top-performing portfolio manager at Polar Capital, kicked off this new venture in May with $200m and it has since grown to about $350m. The fund had discounted management fees for big day one tickets.

Thélème Partners
Patrick Degorce, a former founding partner of the Children’s Investment Fund, hired a handful of ex-TCI colleagues for his new venture, Thélème, which launched with $200m and has since grown to $1.1bn. The firm finished 2010 up 14.6%.

Warwick Capital Partners
Alfredo Mattera and Ian Burgess, who led the global credit team at Polygon Investment Partners, lined up more than $100m from a US seed investor, Cyan Management, for the launch of their European distressed and special situations fund.

Brevan Howard Systematic Trading
The launch of this fund saw Brevan Howard expand into systematic trading. It provided $300m of seed capital for the new strategy, a joint venture with London Diversified Fund Management’s founder David Gorton.

Capula Tail Risk Fund
Recent events in Japan and the Middle East have underlined the argument for buying tail risk protection, strategies that are designed to profit in the event of unforeseen high-impact events, named “black swans.” Capula’s fund that follows this strategy has raised $1.5bn since it launched in March 2010.

CQS Distressed Value Opportunities Fund
This new distressed debt fund, that launched in June and is led by portfolio manager Mark Unferth, plays an active role to enforce creditor rights. It gained 10.15% in the remainder of 2010.  

TT Equity Macro Fund, TT International
Last summer Tim Tacchi’s firm hired Teun Draaisma, a Morgan Stanley equity strategist who was named the best in Europe in a 2009 Thomson Extel survey, to launch a strategy that invests in equities using a top-down global macro view. It debuted in December with over $100m.

ISAM Systematic
This new managed futures fund, which debuted in May, is a joint venture between International Standard Asset Management, whose chief executive officer is Stanley Fink, and Larry Hite, who created Mint Investments, the first $1bn CTA.

Fauchier Partners
Mandate wins from pension funds in the UK, Australia and Japan have helped Fauchier raise $2.6bn in net new pension fund assets in the past three years. The $7.9bn firm has seen a smooth transition of chief executive Christopher Fawcett to senior partner, and has begun diversifying its client base to the US.

The Capital Holdings Funds/Edmond de Rothshild Group
This manager, which has been investing in hedge funds since 1969, grew assets from $6.2bn to $8.5bn during 2010, replacing private client outflows in the past couple of years with institutional capital. A new gold share class of the firm’s Leveraged Capital Holdings fund, that launched in 2009, gained 48% last year.

Liongate Capital Management
Liongate has an active turnover of managers and aims to be fully invested in all market cycles. It grew assets from $2.1bn in 2009 to $3.2bn. The firm’s flagship multi-strategy fund has annualised at 9.86% since its inception in April 2004.

Stenham
Stenham, which grew out of a family office, last year acquired smaller rival, Montier Partners. Supported by steady performance, firm assets grew from $2.7bn to $3.5bn in 2010, boosted by several pension fund mandate wins.

Unigestion
Under Patrick Fenal, who recently moved from chief executive to deputy chairman, and Philippe Gougenheim, the new head of hedge funds who this Swiss manager hired in April from Man Investments, Unigestion grew assets from $3.05bn to $3.62bn during 2011. Of the net new money, 90-95% came from institutional investors.

BlueCrest Capital Management
Mike Platt’s firm took in more money than any other European hedge fund manager in 2010, growing assets from $16.2bn to $24.6bn. In 2004 the firm supplemented its predominantly fixed income offering with a computer-driven fund, BlueTrend, which has been one of the best performers in its sector.

Brevan Howard Asset Management
During 2010, a year when many of the firm’s principal risk takers moved to Geneva, Brevan Howard grew assets from $27.9bn to $32bn. It cemented its reputation as the first port of call for would-be hedge fund traders coming from investment banks or other hedge funds.

CQS
During 2010 firm assets grew from $6.7bn to $10bn. It diversified its investor base by launching a Ucits fund, registering with the Australian regulator and listing a fund on the London Stock Exchange. It also beefed up its sales and marketing team, under Mandy Mannix, who joined from Nomura in August.

Lansdowne Partners
This firm was widely recommended by its rivals and investors, who said that chief executive Paul Ruddock has built one of the strongest brands in the European hedge fund industry. The firm raised $800m in hedge fund assets last year and also runs some long-only money.

Winton Capital
Founder David Harding, one of the most high-profile advocates of managed futures, has spawned a generator of imitators. The firm, which has an impressive long-term track record, has continued to invest in research and last year Harding donated £20m to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.

Leda Braga, BlueCrest Capital Management
Braga was brought into BlueCrest by former JP Morgan colleague and BlueCrest founder Mike Platt to investigate a move into systematic trading. She set up BlueTrend, the systematic strategy that is now BlueCrest’s largest, in 2004. It has the best long-term track record of any of the large managed futures strategies.

Mina Gerowin, Paulson Europe
The head of European event, distressed and credit investing at John Paulson’s London office, Gerowin was instrumental in lobbying successfully against the passage of the “third country” rule in the Alternative Investment Fund Managers’ Directive - a clause that would have forbidden US managers such as Paulson from selling funds into Europe.

Anita Nemes, Deutsche Bank
After 10 years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Nemes left last year to join Deutsche Bank, where, as global head of capital introduction, she leads a team of 23 people, and is the main intermediary between the prime brokerage division’s hedge fund clients and the investor community.

Emily Porter-Lynch, Universities Superannuation Scheme
As portfolio manager in absolute return strategies at USS, the second largest UK pension scheme, Porter-Lynch leads the £31.5bn fund’s allocation to hedge funds. Her team allocated £950m to 15 managers last year, and is looking at backing start-ups.

Geraldine Sundstrom, Brevan Howard Asset Management
After leaving Moore Capital Management, Sundstrom was approached by Brevan Howard founder Alan Howard to launch an emerging markets fund for the firm. The $2.7bn fund, which is now closed to new investors, has returned over 13% annualised since it launched in April 2007.

Michael Hintze, CQS
Having navigated his firm through the financial crisis, without restricting investor redemptions, Hintze continued to rebuild the business, growing assets from $6.7bn to $10bn last year, launching several new funds and targeting new markets. Hintze continued making significant charitable contributions during 2010 to local and international causes.

Alan Howard, Brevan Howard Asset Management
The principle risk taker at the firm, Howard manages 20-25% of the firm’s risk capital out of Geneva. He has cemented Brevan Howard’s reputation as the first port of call for would-be hedge fund traders coming from investment banks or other hedge funds.

Mike Platt, BlueCrest Capital Management
Last month Platt announced that BlueCrest had bought back the 25.5% stake in the firm that it had sold to Man Group in 2003, leaving the ownership of BlueCrest wholly in the hands of its working partners. The original sale of the stake helped BlueCrest boost assets from $3.7bn to $25bn over this period.

Manny Roman, GLG Partners
Roman helped secure Man Group’s transformational acquisition of GLG, a deal that was criticised as too expensive for Man. Roman, who has become chief operating officer at Man, and GLG co-founders Noam Gottesman and Pierre Lagrange now receive higher base salaries than Man chief executive Peter Clarke.

Blaine Tomlinson, Financial Risk Management
Tomlinson retook the reins of chief executive at FRM in March 2010, after the firm had lost over $5bn during the crisis. Under Tomlinson, last year FRM stemmed outflows and begun rebuilding its business, taking in taking in $800m of net new money last year and initiating growth in customised portfolios.

To be announced on the night