Quote from timcar:
More difficult to get your HF open today 2013
IF SETTING up a hedge fund were easy, more people would do it: bar inheritance or winning the lottery, there are few swifter paths to immense riches. Sadly for aspiring plutocrats, it is getting ever harder to launch a fund. Swaggering financiers once joked that launching with less than $1 billion of outside money to invest was hardly worth their time. Debuts that splashy are now notable only for their scarcity. A new fund typically opens with $50m-100m in assets under management. Even so, and despite buoyant stockmarkets, the number of launches is declining (see chart).
Punier funds make for a less attractive business model. A $50m pile might once have been enough to sustain a small firm. Creaming off 2% of assets and 20% of profitsâthe standard hedge-fund fee formulaâcould generate around $2m a year given decent performance. No longer. Declining fees and low industry-wide returns have halved that amount.