The winners of the Hedgeweek Global Awards 2014, as voted for by our readers…

The Hedgeweek Global Awards 2014 event, sponsored by Lyxor Asset Management and held at the end of February, featured winners from across the hedge funds spectrum who gathered in London’s Mayfair to celebrate a year of illustrious achievement.

The Europa Event Driven Fund is managed by José Luis Pérez. Pérez (pictured) aims to capture investment opportunities around corporate activity in Europe through inefficiencies and under or over-valuations relating to M&A, capital structure changes, spin-offs, regulatory changes, recapitalisations, restructurings and bankruptcies.

Philippe Jabre has been successfully managing convertible bonds for 30 years. Whilst at GLG Partners (between 1997 and 2006), Jabre honed his convertible bond strategy resulting in five funds with a combined AuM of USD7bn at its peak. In 2007, Jabre branched out and launched the JABCAP Convertible Bond Fund with founding partners, Mark Cecil (pictured) and Philippe Riachi.

Lyxor Asset Management offers a range of risk-balanced funds in its Absolute Return Multi Assets (ARMA) strategy: ARMA was launched in May 2010 and aims to deliver EONIA plus 2 per cent p.a. with a volatility target of 3 per cent; ARMA 8 is a more aggressive version targeting returns of EONIA plus 6 to 10 per cent with a volatility target of 8 per cent.

Advance Emerging Capital Limited is a London-based investment management company with a dedicated focus on global emerging and frontier growth market equities. The firm was established in 1996 by former Bank of England executive Nigel Wilson. In the early years, Advance Emerging Capital focused exclusively on emerging market equities. This remit was extended to include frontier market equities when Dr Slim Feriani (piuctured) took over the reins as CEO and CIO in 2005.

Event-driven, equity hedge and activism were strong themes in 2013 and will likely continue in 2014 according to Kenneth Heinz (pictured), President of Hedge Fund Research. Activism was certainly a great trade in 2013; the HFRX Activist Index posted gains of 19.22 per cent. Equally, the HFRX Event-Driven Index gained 13.87 per cent and is already up 2.72 per cent YTD.

UMB Fund Services administrates approximately USD190bn of assets across its mutual funds and alternative funds business. Its alternative investment division has been supporting hedge funds, private equity funds, fund-of-funds since 1991.

By Marianne Scordell (pictured), Bougeville Consulting – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”, famously wrote Charles Dickens at the start of one of his novels, the title of which we borrowed last year1. While those words were seeking to describe another epoch, the sense of movement, upheaval and uncertainty they convey somehow echoes the array of changes currently impacting the hedge fund industry, in Europe especially.

Lyxor Asset Management continues to push the envelope when it comes to bringing innovation to its market-leading managed account platform. Lyxor currently supports approximately 100 managers and over USD12bn in AuM, of which 80 managers sit on the commingled platform with a further 20 managers offering dedicated funds to institutional investors.

JP Fund Administration is part of the JP Funds Group with offices located in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Singapore and representation in Australia.

Helping clients access the widening spectrum of European hedge fund opportunities has culminated in Northern Trust Hedge Fund Services being voted ‘Best European Hedge Fund Administrator’.

Multiple award-winning hedge fund administrator Opus Fund Services was established in Bermuda in 2006, subsequently expanding its footprint into the US with offices in Chicago (2008), San Francisco (2009), New York (2013) and most recently Portland, OR (2014). Opus serves over 150 fund managers and 250 funds with a combined AuM of USD 8.3bn.

“While new business momentum from start-up funds remains strong for our firm, the noticeable difference in our growth over the past couple of years has been the increasing traction we’ve had with more seasoned portfolio managers. Because these managers had successfully managed money at established hedge funds before, they are launching their own firms with materially larger initial capital than we had seen in previous years,” observes Jack Seibald (pictured), managing member at Concept Capital Markets LLC, one of North America’s leading introducing brokers.

BNP Paribas established its global prime services division in 2003 and, in more recent years the firm has made a concerted effort to build out the business. In 2008, BNP Paribas acquired the prime brokerage business of Bank of America, establishing a US footprint and client base. In 2011, the firm embarked on a technology upgrade and invested in a new global prime brokerage platform with a view to increasing its business in Europe and Asia.

Amsterdam-based hedge fund seeding firm IMQ is ready to embark on a new initiative as its current IMQubator fund begins to reach the end of its seven-year investment lifecycle; the fund will be liquidated in December 2015.

New York-based Liquid Holdings offers a significant real-time risk management solution to the hedge fund community. Its cloud-based Liquid platform integrates portfolio and risk analytics by leveraging the firm’s heritage in bringing next generation technology expertise to the hedge fund community.

Advent Software has recently launched a new online community to bring the power of collaboration directly to hedge fund managers. Advent Direct Community is part of the Advent Direct initiative being rolled out by the firm, a cloud platform that allows clients to tailor and consolidate workflows from front to back.

SunGard’s cloud-based Hedge360 bridges the gap between front-, middle- and back-office operations and supports the full investment lifecycle for alternative investment fund managers.

Deutsche Börse Cash Market provides listing, trading and clearing services to issuers, intermediaries and investors. In addition, it provides efficient access to the capital markets, supports the latest trading techniques and provides an ever-growing range of tradable securities such as stocks, exchange traded funds, bonds, warrants and certificates. Xetra, one of the leading market places for securities in Europe, is run by Deutsche Börse Cash Market.

What is perhaps different to today’s start-up manager as compared to five years ago is the need to launch with greater amounts of capital. Moreover, they are doing so with a greater awareness of the need to adopt best practices from day one to stand a chance of attracting institutional dollars.

The last few months have been a flurry of activity for Cordium. In December 2013 it acquired Sigma Partnership, a London-based compliance and accounting firm. This was followed by the acquisition of HedgeStart in January 2014, a multi-service provider to the hedge fund industry. Then last month Cordium acquired Zodiac Advisory Services, a Malta-based provider of compliance, risk, accounting and governance services.

DMS Offshore Investment Services (‘DMS’) was established in the Cayman Islands by Don Seymour (pictured) in 2000. Over the past 14 years it has grown into one of the industry’s leading fund governance firms with over 200 people. “It’s been a 14-year overnight success,” says Seymour with tongue firmly in cheek.

It’s been a barnstorming last few months for London-headquartered Peregrine Communications with some strong client wins including Acadian Asset Management, Wells Fargo Asset Management, Mirae Asset Global Investments and Rogge Global Partners.

Agecroft Partners specialises in consulting and third-party marketing for hedge funds. Its objective: to raise assets globally for institutional quality hedge fund managers by utilising a consultative approach within the institutional investor community.