Arguably at least half of those in our 2010 and 2012 surveys are worthy repeats – based on continuing asset growth and performance – but this year we want to prioritize the showcasing of new talent that we have not covered before.

Aside from that, the process follows the pattern of previous surveys. We contact allocators including family offices, funds of funds, pension funds, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, and service providers. Nominators remain anonymous and the long list of nominations reached a couple of hundred names. Fifty names are selected on a mix of criteria – performance, assets, pedigree, reputation and testimonials. The geographic split is broadly proportional to industry assets with the USA home to most hedge fund assets, Europe in second place, and Asia third.

As always we have to enter into the customary caveat that any survey of this kind must omit abundant talent, so our list of 50 names should be viewed as a selection of examples of potential future hedge fund industry leaders – and not as an exclusive list. As well as ruling out former survey constituents, space constraints force us to overlook a huge number of very high calibre nominations this time. If there are 10,000 hedge funds worldwide, it seems likely that many hundreds could be tomorrow’s titans – and may indeed appear in future surveys. In particular we received many nominations of female portfolio managers, some of whom may find their way into next year’s Leading Women in Hedge Funds survey. We will happily wager that many of this year’s names will be running 11-figure levels of assets within a decade from now, and will measure their net worth in 10 figures.