The year end returns of a number of hedge funds have been released so far. In case of public hedge funds, Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG)’s performance in last year has been commendable. Fortress Macro Fund was up 17.8 percent, while the Asia Fund gained was up 21 percent by the end of 2012. Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS)’s analyst Craig Siegenthaler and Mark Deluzio recently raised their estimates for FIG’s earnings after it was successful in raising $1.65 billion for Fortress Japan Opportunity Fund II, these assets exceed FIG’s own target of $1 billion. Q4 performance of Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG)’s Macro and Asia Funds exceeded that of the benchmark indices. Moreover, FIG’s co-founder, Rob Kauffman retired and Fortress bought back his ownership of 51.3 million shares, thus reducing the total number of dividend paying shares for the company. In line with these tailwinds, Credit Suisse’s analysts raised their EPS estimate from $0.13 to $0.15 for Fortress’ Q4 earnings. The total AUM of Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG) was $54.12 billion at the end of 2012.
Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (NYSE:OZM) returned moderately well in last year, the OZ Master Fund was up 11 percent in 2012. However Credit Suisse reduced the estimated earnings for Q4 because the analysts believe that the Master Fund had a net outflow of assets amounting to $150 million. The estimated EPS for Q4 was reduced from $0.75 to $0.71. Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (NYSE:OZM) manages $32.33 billion as of Dec 2012.
On the other hand, the London based Man Group PLC (LON:EMG)’s flagship fund, AHL Diversified ($1.57 billion), was down 1.08 percent, while AHL Evolution (AUM $1.8 billion) gained 23.3 percent last year. The entire group of AHL funds managed a total of $16.3 billion as of Sep 2012. Limited new investments, large outflows and hefty management fees at Man Group have turned away investors and earned the company a downgrade from analyst firms. RBC Capital Market analysts believe that the AHL fund has to outperform the MSCI World index to recruit new investments. AHL funds follow complex algorithms to predict lucrative investments, a strategy that has underperformed for the hedge fund since 2009.
