Hedge fund rich list king Alan Howard dethroned
LONDON (Reuters) - Alan Howard, media-shy founder of Brevan Howard, has lost his top spot in the Sunday Times' list of Britain's richest hedge fund managers following a run of poor performances by his flagship fund.
After heading the rankings since 2012, Howard slid to fourth place in this year's list, published on Friday, after taking a 460 million pound hit to his personal fortune.
That left Michael Platt, co-founder of BlueCrest, who tied with Howard last year, as the richest British-based hedge fund manager.
Howard's flagship fund bet mainly on macroeconomic trends but lost 1.99 percent in 2015 when its peers lost just 1.26 percent on average, Hedge Fund Research data showed.
Brevan's assets have almost halved from two years ago to stand at $23.7 billion, while Howard's personal fortune is now 1.04 billion pounds, according to the list.
Another notable casualty was Crispin Odey, founder of Odey Asset Management, who is now out of the billionaires' club after his fortune fell by 200 million pounds to 900 million pounds.
Odey saw his pay cut by 16 million pounds to 31.8 million as profits fell sharply to 84.1 million in 2015, from 174.2 million in 2014.
BlueCrest's Platt, who shocked markets by closing BlueCrest's doors to external investors last year, saw the steepest increase in wealth of those on the list, to 2.1 billion pounds from 1.5 billion pounds a year earlier, despite some of his funds underperforming.
Jumping two spots to second place on the list was Michael Hintze, founder of credit-focused CQS, after his wealth grew by 50 million pounds. David Harding of systematics trading house Winton surged four places to the number three slot after his personal fortune grew by 150 million pounds.
Rokos Asset Management also made it into the top 10 after owner Chris Rokos, famous for raising $3.5 billion for what was one of 2015's biggest launches, earned an extra 260 million pounds to take his wealth to 660 million pounds.
New to the list was Jeremy Hosking, who founded Marathon Asset Management, and whose personal wealth hit 330 million pounds this year.
The top 10 hedge fund managers added over 1.4 billion pounds to their personal fortunes, the list showed, despite hedge funds losing 1.12 percent on average in 2015, Hedge Fund Research data showed.
(Reporting by Maiya Keidan; Editing by Susan Fenton)
