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Dalton Strategic Partnership
Leonard Charlton’s Melchior European fund gained 16.28% in 2010 and 13.45% in 2011, and hasn’t had a down year since it launched in 2006. The strategy, which includes a regulated Ucits version, hard-closed in October at $1bn. In January Charlton was promoted to head of the firm’s absolute return business.

Exane
This €4.5bn French manager’s range of market-neutral long/short equity funds has performed consistently over the past five years. The largest – a €1.1bn technology and telecoms fund called Archimedes – hasn’t had a down year and gained 4% last year. Exane recently launched two more sector funds and it has began expanding into benchmarked long-only equities.

Majedie Asset Management
Matthew Smith and Chris Reid’s Tortoise fund has achieved average gains of 15.7% a year since it launched in August 2007, including returns of 10.8% in 2011. In January the fund hit $510m and hard-closed to new money.

Marshall Wace
Co-founder Paul Marshall’s Eureka fund gained 9.74% last year while the Global Opportunities fund, managed by Fehim Sever, was up 27.54%. A market-neutral financials fund run by Amit Rajpal gained 3.2%. Firm assets grew from $4.5bn to $5.5bn over the course of 2011, boosted by institutional allocations.

Zebedee Capital Partners
The Zebedee Focus fund, led by co-founder Julian Edwards, gained 9.05% last year and has annualised at 18.89% since it launched in February 2008. The $800m strategy, which is hard-closed, runs a concentrated portfolio of around 15 positions, favouring low net exposure and no leverage.

Cheyne Capital
The Cheyne European Event Driven fund, which invests in equity and credit, gained 2.70% last year, following gains of 20.48% in 2010, its first calendar year. The six-strong investment team is led by Simon Davies. Assets in the strategy grew from $210m to about $480m last year.

Marwyn Investment Management
The Marwyn Value Investors fund takes a private-equity style approach to buying stakes in undervalued companies and working closely with management to add operational value. This approach helped the strategy gain 27% in 2011 and deliver annualised gains of 24% since it launched in March 2006.

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 11.8% in 2009, 7.8% in 2010 and 0.70% last year. The $450m fund has reopened to raise another $250m. Last year Omni opened an office in Bermuda.

OVS Capital
Led by Sam Morland, who formerly ran the London office of HBK Capital Management, this event-driven hedge fund gained 7.82% in 2011, its first calendar year. Assets have grown from $8m at its launch in October 2010 to $340m, and OVS plans to soft-close the fund on April 1.

York Capital
Investors in York’s two European hedge funds suffered small losses last year but the two funds made most of these back in January and have delivered strong gains over three years. In this period, the $2.2bn York European Opportunities fund has annualised at 9.79%, while the $550m concentrated York European Focus fund has annualised at 14.06%.

Aspect Capital
Aspect’s flagship medium-term trend-following systematic strategy has gained 10.19% on an annualised basis since it launched, returning 4.51% in 2011. The firm, which was founded by Michael Adam and Martin Lueck, has grown assets from $4.3bn at the start of 2011 to $6bn.

BlueCrest Capital Management
Leda Braga’s $13.6bn BlueTrend strategy was up 0.32% last year. Its long-term track record is unmatched – it has annualised at over 15% a year since it launched in April 2004. Now BlueCrest is looking to raise more than £150m for a listed company that will feed into BlueTrend.

Cantab Capital Partners
The Aristarchus share class of the Cantab Quantitative fund gained 12.8% last year and has annualised at 13.5% since its inception in March 2007. The launch of a Ucits version of the strategy on Matrix Asset Management’s platform helped Cambridge-based Cantab almost double assets to $2bn last year.

CFM
This Paris-based manager’s systematic Discus strategy was up 21.95% last year and has annualised at 14.4% since launching over 20 years ago. The strategy’s $2.8bn in assets includes a $1.8bn allocation from Stratus, CFM’s multi-strategy fund that gained 15.63% last year.

Winton Capital Management
The flagship Winton Futures fund gained 6.29% last year, and has annualised at 16.22% since it launched in October 1997. Winton raised $9.6bn in net new money in 2011, taking firm assets to $28bn. It has continued to invest in research and has been expanding its Ucits business.

Aviva Investors
Bearish positioning helped the G7 Fixed Income fund gain 4.26% in 2011. Led by portfolio manager Shahid Ikram, the £500m fund has annualised at 6.20% over the past three years, and is now hard-closed to new investors. Last year Aviva hired Daniel James as head of global markets alpha.

BlackRock
BlackRock’s European multi-strategy global fixed income fund gained 20.24% in 2011 and has annualised at 17.9% over the last three years. The $870m Dublin-domiciled strategy trades more than 40 different fixed income strategies, including credit, interest rates and emerging markets, and is managed by a team of 60 people.

Brummer and Partners Nektar
This Swedish firm’s relative value fund, led by Kent Janer, gained 7.60% last year and has annualised at 12.66% since it launched in 1998. Assets in the strategy grew by 39% to $3.4bn during 2011, and the firm opened an office in London, where it recruited two senior portfolio managers.

Capula
Capula’s relative value fund was up 6.16% last year, following gains of 12.25% in 2009 and 10% in 2010. The Capula tail risk fund gained 12.5% in 2011. Firm assets grew from $8bn to $13bn and Capula hired David Gu from Bank of America Merrill Lynch to be co-chief investment officer with founder Yan Huo.

Prologue Capital
Prologue’s strategy, which focuses on US and European fixed income, and global inflation trading, gained 8.37% last year and has annualised at 10.66% over the past five years. Firm assets have roughly doubled to $1.46bn in the last three years. Last year Prologue hired four portfolio managers.

Chenavari Investment Managers
This $1.7bn boutique saw $400m of net inflows last year. Its asset-backed securities fund, Chenavari Toro Capital 1A, gained 24.71% in 2011 and has annualised at 75.15% since it launched in June 2009, while the Chenavari Multi-Strategy Credit fund has annualised at 13.4% since its October 2008 launch.

CQS
The CQS Credit Long/Short fund gained 6.8% last year and the firm teamed up with Schroders for a Ucits version of the strategy. The CQS ABS fund, which soft-closed in May at $1.95bn, has annualised at 29.8% since it launched in October 2006. In August CQS launched a European distressed debt fund.

GLG Partners
The $150m GLG European Distressed Debt fund has annualised at 24.94% since it launched in August 2009. It is managed by Galia Velimukhametova, who joined GLG in 2008 from the London arm of US credit manager King Street Capital. The fund invests in bonds, loans, equities, convertibles and credit default swaps.

Nightscape Capital
Short positions in Spanish banks and Italian sovereign credit helped the Nightscape Global Value fund gain 7.79% in 2011, its first calendar year of trading. The $50m fund launched in September 2010 and gained 2.4% in the remainder of that year. The team, lead by Nick Stukas, was previously the senior team in London at Sandelman Partners.

Warwick Capital
Staying away from early-stage distressed names, combined with short positions in its special situations book and a tail risk hedge helped Warwick’s European distressed and special situations fund gain 3.6% last year, its first calendar year of trading. Warwick grew assets from $32m at launch in August 2010 to $380m.

BlueBay
The BlueBay Macro fund spun out of the firm’s flagship BlueBay Multi-Strategy fund in November 2009. It gained 8.15% in the remainder of that year, then rose 19.25% in 2010 and 6.65% last year. The fund, which is focused on emerging markets, closed to new money in August at $900m.

BlueCrest Capital Management
BlueCrest International, this manager’s flagship fixed income global macro hedge fund led by founder Michael Platt, finished 2011 up 6.13%, after gaining 45.39% in 2009 and 12.77% in 2010. Assets in the strategy grew from $8.3bn to $9.9bn during 2011.

Brevan Howard Asset Management
Last year Alan Howard’s firm silenced critics who said it had got to big too sustain performance: the $26.6bn flagship Brevan Howard Master fund gained 12.12% in 2011. The $1.73bn Brevan Howard Asia fund, led by Kaspar Ernst, was up 8.86%. The firm hired over 30 traders globally during 2011.

Legal and General Investment Management
The LGIM Global Macro fund has posted four consecutive years of gains since it changed strategy in early 2008. Under Ben Gill, who joined from GLG Partners in 2008 to run global macro, the $1bn strategy gained 13.11% last year and has annualised at 11.44% since February 2008.

Pivot Capital Management
This Monaco-based firm’s $910m Pivot Global Value fund gained 16.6% in 2011 and has delivered annualised returns of 17.4% in the decade since it launched. Investors who allocated to a “special idea” special purpose vehicle that was launched in April, saw their money quadruple. The SPV is now being wound down.

BlueCrest Capital Management
BlueCrest’s $7.2bn multi-strategy fund AllBlue, which allocates across a range of in-house funds, ended 2011 up 1.87%. It has returned 10.07% annualised over the past three years, with 3.91% volatility. Now BlueCrest is looking to raise more than £150m for a listed company that will feed into BlueTrend.

Brummer & Partners
Brummer Multi-Strategy, which invests across the firm’s nine hedge funds, gained 3.1% last year and has annualised at 8.3% since it launched in 2002. International investors account for a growing proportion of Sweden’s largest hedge fund manager’s assets, which grew from $11bn to $14bn in 2011.

CQS
The CQS Diversified fund, which allocates across its in-house range, has annualised at 7.6% since it launched in March 2007. Last year CQS grew assets from $9.3bn to $11.2bn. It soft-closed the ABS and Directional Opportunities funds, launched a European distressed debt fund and teamed up with Schroders for a Ucits-compliant credit fund.

Exane
This €4.5bn French manager’s range of market-netural long/short equity funds has performed consistently over the past five years. The largest – a €1.1bn technology and telecoms fund called Archimedes – hasn’t had a down year and gained 4% last year. Exane recently launched two more sector funds and it has begun expanding into benchmarked long-only equities.

Marshall Wace
In a year when most equity strategies suffered, Marshall Wace’s range stood out with gains across the board from all of its hedge funds. Most notably, co-founder Paul Marshall’s Eureka Fund gained 9.74% in 2011, while the Global Opportunities fund, managed by Fehim Sever, was up 27.54%.

Axa Investment Managers
The €4.4bn fund of funds manager, which runs 89% on behalf of the parent insurance company, launched a fund of tail risk strategies, which gained 8.85% last year. It also raised $100m for a bank capital fund that underwrites good quality corporate loans from banks’ balance sheets.

Hermes BPK
Hermes BPK manages $2.3bn in multi-manager hedge funds on behalf of the BT pension scheme and other institutional investors. The approach is predicated on bespoke thematic solutions. In the past year Hermes has launched initiatives to de-risk equity exposures through the use of long/short equity funds, and to hedge against tail risk through a managed account platform of commodity trading advisers.

PGGM Investments
The €109bn Dutch scheme has achieved big cost savings by running almost all of its external hedge fund investments on its managed account platform. Last year it introduced overlay accounts to mitigate aggregate risk on the platform and it plans to start implementing a passive trade replication programme this year.

Tesco Pension Trustees
Moving from funds of funds to direct investing helped the £5.5bn defined benefit pension scheme’s hedge fund portfolio gain 10.5% last year. Led by John Kells, alternative asset specialist, the fund is starting to look at emerging managers. The scheme has a 9% allocation to hedge funds.

The Wellcome Trust
The £14bn endowment has £2.5bn invested in hedge funds. By cutting exposure to long/short equity managers and adding managed futures, it gained 5% in the year to September 30, and an average of 9.9% a year over a three-year period. It is in the vanguard of manager engagement and created a “fund of one” with an Asian hedge fund manager.

Avantium Investment Management
Kay Haigh, the former global head of emerging markets structuring and trading at Deutsche Bank, left the bank after 17 years to set up Avantium, taking with him his team of seven that had incubated within the bank for two years. The team launched an emerging markets global macro fund in October with $180m and it has since grown to $500m.

Bramshott
Former Moore Capital portfolio manager Paul Findley set up Bramshott and assembled a 16-strong team. They launched a European long/short equities fund last June. The fund launched with $440m, including an investment from Moore. Before Moore, Findley spent a decade at Threadneedle, where he latterly managed the UK Crescendo fund.

Carrhae Capital
Former SAC Capital Advisors trader Ali Akay set up Carrhae and launched an emerging markets equities fund on December 1. Akay leads an 11-strong team. The firm secured a $150m seed investment from the Blackstone Group and plans to soft-close at $500m in the next few months.

Occitan Capital Partners
Last January derivatives traders Herve Gallo and Thomas de Garidel-Thoron launched an equities-focused fund that expresses its fundamental views through derivatives. Together with chief executive John Candillier, they secured a $150m seed investment from Reservoir Capital Group. The firm has grown to about $1bn and is now closed.

SLJ Macro Partners
Renowned currency strategist Stephen Jen left BlueGold Capital Management to launch SLJ Macro Partners in November. The business has three pillars: a global macro hedge fund, foreign exchange overlay, and research and advisory. Jen, the former head of global currency research at Morgan Stanley, has lined up $220m for the venture.

36 South Kohinoor Core fund
This is a hybrid volatility and options strategy that buys long-dated options to trade volatility. Run by co-founder Jerry Haworth, it launched in March last year and gained 27% in the remainder of 2011. Assets grew from $90m at launch to $212m.

Chenavari Toro II fund
Chenavari Investment Managers raised $75m for this fund, which enters into risk-sharing transactions with European banks by securitising assets from their balance sheets. The firm hired credit portfolio management specialists Rene Mouchotte from Credit Agricole and Hubert Tissier de Mallerais from RBS to run it.

Finisterre Equity fund
Emerging markets debt specialist Finisterre Capital made its first foray into equities with the launch of the long/short Finisterre Equity fund. The firm, which last year sold a majority stake to Principal Global Investors, hired Alistair Candlish and Edward Cole from NewSmith Capital Partners to launch the fund.

GSA Quantitative Futures
‘Jonathan Hiscock’s quantitative investment firm GSA Capital raised $175m for a new managed futures fund, which launched in May. It is run by James Herlihy. GSA’s flagship GSA Capital International fund has not had a down month in over three years’.

Orsay Merger Arbitrage fund
Managed at Oddo Asset Management by former Banque d’Orsay proprietary traders Christian Fleury, Karin Benguigui and Sofiane Cheraba, the pure merger arbitrage fund launched on June 1 and gained 10.66% in the rest of the year. It received a $100m seed investment from Oddo.

The Capital Holdings Funds/Edmond de Rothschild Group
This $8.5bn firm’s decision to move to a top-down approach, based on identifying macro themes, has paid off. Its $900m Trading Capital Holdings fund has annualised at 9.6% over the past five years. A gold share class of the Leveraged Capital Holdings fund has doubled in value since it launched in 2009.

Culross
Consultants praised Culross’s thematic approach and its superior investment team, led by Nigel Blanshard. The $550m boutique’s Culross Global fund has annualised at 2.06% over the past three years and 8.56% over five years. The Culross Arbitrage fund has gained 7.92% a year over three years.

Fauchier Partners
Mandate wins from pension funds in the UK, Australia and Japan have helped Fauchier raise $2.6bn in net new pension fund money in the past three years. Over the same period, the firm’s flagship Jubilee Absolute Return fund has annualised at 3.10%. Last year Fauchier set up a French subsidiary.

Kairos Partners
Italian manager Kairos, with $3bn in funds of funds, has been a pioneer in Ucits hedge funds. The team has a nimble investment approach, turning over 80% of the portfolio a year and focusing on mid-sized managers. The flagship Kairos Multi-Strategy fund has gained 65% in the past decade, during which the MSCI World index was up 11%.

Stenham Asset Management
Stenham has seamlessly integrated fund of funds rival Montier Partners, which it bought in 2010. The $2.7bn firm’s global macro Stenham Trading fund has annualised at 4.24% over the past three years and in 2011 it won several pension fund mandates.

BlueCrest Capital Management
Over the last three years, the flagship BlueCrest Capital International has annualised at 20.30%, while the systematic BlueTrend has annualised at 6.69%. Last March BlueCrest 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.

Brevan Howard Asset Management
Last year Alan Howard’s firm silenced critics who said it had got to big too sustain performance. The $26.6bn flagship Brevan Howard Master Fund gained 12.12% in 2011, while the multi-strategy fund, which allocates across its in-house range, gained 5.17%. The firm hired over 30 traders globally during 2011.

CFM
This Paris-based manager grew assets by $2.3bn to $5.4bn in 2011. Last year its systematic Discus strategy gained 21.95%, while the multi-strategy Stratus fund was up 15.63% and closed to new money. Both funds have posted double-digit annualised gains since launch.

Marshall Wace
Co-founder Paul Marshall’s Eureka fund gained 9.74% last year while the Global Opportunities fund, managed by Fehim Sever, was up 27.54%. A market-neutral financials fund run by Amit Rajpal gained 3.2%. Firm assets grew from $4.5bn to $5.5bn over the course of 2011, boosted by institutional allocations.

Winton Capital Management
Last year David Harding’s firm overtook Man Group’s AHL – the strategy Harding co-founded in 1987 – as the largest systematic manager in Europe. Winton now manages $28bn. As it has raised more pension fund money, it has reduced its volatility and leverage, and slowed down the speed of its trading systems.

Leda Braga, President and Head of Systematic Trading,
BlueCrest Capital Management
Braga joined BlueCrest to investigate a move into systematic trading and now her $13.6bn BlueTrend strategy accounts for half the firm’s assets. It has annualised at over 15% since its launch in April 2004. Now BlueCrest is looking to raise over £150m for a listed company that will feed into BlueTrend.

Kathryn Graham, Director, BT Pension Scheme Management
Graham works at the pensions advisory arm of the BT Pension Scheme, the largest in the UK. She now runs a team tasked with managing liability risk. Graham sits on the London board of industry charity 100 Women in Hedge Funds and she is also a trustee of the Hedge Fund Standards Board.

Sandra Robertson, Chief Investment Officer, Oxford University
Endowment Management
Robertson joined the Oxford endowment in September 2007, after 14 years at the Wellcome Trust. The £828.5m Oxford Endowment fund, which targets long-term funding, gained 13.1% in 2009 and 11.7% in 2010, while the £461.7m Oxford Capital fund, which funds shorter-term projects, gained 10.4% in 2009 and 9.6% in 2010.

Geraldine Sundstrom, Portfolio Manager, Brevan Howard Asset Management
Now based in Geneva, Sundstrom runs a $2.1bn emerging markets fund. Despite a tough time last year – the fund suffered its first down year and lost 6.39% – it was up 6.48% in January and has annualised at 9.97% since it launched in April 2007.

Galia Velimukhametova, Portfolio Manager, GLG Partners
Kazakhstan-born Velimukhametova cut her teeth in fixed income research and then proprietary trading at JP Morgan. She set up the London office of US credit manager King Street Capital before being lured to GLG Partners in 2008. Her $150m GLG European Distressed Debt fund has annualised at 24.94% since it launched in August 2009.

To be announced on the night.