Kenneth Griffin and James Simons Top Institutional Investor’s Alpha’s Rich List Ranking of the World’s Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – May 10, 2016) – Kenneth Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, and James Simons, founder and chairman of Renaissance Technologies, tie for the No. 1 spot in the 15^th anniversary edition of the Rich List, Institutional Investor’s Alpha‘s annual ranking of the world’s top-earning hedge fund managers. Griffin has made 14 appearances on the Rich List, while Simons has been in the ranking all 15 years, the only manager to do so. They each raked in $1.7 billion in 2015.

The top 25 managers on this year’s Rich List earned a combined $13 billion last year, up more than 10 percent from the previous year. This is despite the fact that roughly half of all hedge funds lost money last year. To qualify for this year’s ranking, a manager needed to have earned at least $135 million — the lowest annual minimum since 2011, when it took just $100 million to make the cut.

To calculate an individual’s earnings, Alpha counts gains on individuals’ capital in their funds, as well as their share of the fees. Perhaps this is why five managers on this year’s list qualified even though at least one of their funds lost money in 2015. Only individuals at firms that manage money for outside clients are eligible for the Rich List.

Griffin and Simons are followed closely by Raymond Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, who earned $1.4 billion in 2015 and has appeared on the Rich List for 13 straight years. Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund firm in the world, with $104 billion in hedge fund assets at the start of 2016. Appaloosa Management founder and president David Tepper more than tripled his personal earnings from the previous year, to $1.4 billion, tying him with serial top earner Dalio on this year’s Rich List. Rounding out the top five is Millennium Management’s Israel (Izzy) Englander, with $1.15 billion. This is the first time Englander’s annual earnings have reached 10 figures. In 2015 both of Millennium’s multistrategy funds posted 12.5 percent gains.

This year about half of the 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers used computer-generated investment strategies to produce their investment gains. Six of the 25 managers are new to the ranking, including Two Sigma’s John Overdeck and David Siegel, whose firm profited handsomely last year from computer-driven strategies.

Over the 15 years of the Rich List, hedge fund managers on the ranking have made a total of $192.5 billion.

Many familiar names from the ranking failed to qualify this year because they lost money in 2015. They include Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors, James Dinan of York Capital Management, Daniel Loeb of Third Point and John Paulson of Paulson & Co.

The full 2016 Rich List, manager profiles, a ranking of the all-time top hedge fund earners and more can be viewed at http://www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com/HedgeFundRichList.html.

About Institutional Investor’s Alpha
Institutional Investor’s Alpha is a leading provider of news, analysis and rankings for the hedge fund industry, delivering the most insightful, entertaining and authoritative published content about hedge funds online and in print. Alpha is a publication ofInstitutional Investor, a respected financial publishing and information company for nearly 50 years. Visit www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com for more information.