Most of the managers in this year’s report launched their own firms during the past five years, though we do also have several who have joined established firms such as Green Ash Partners, Ocean Leonid, Trium Capital, High Ground Investment Management, Aspect Capital and Gresham Investment Management to launch a strategy, and one, Argosy-Lionbridge Management, that partnered with a private real estate investor, Argosy Real Estate Partners.

Three of the firms featured in this report are new multi-strategy and multi-manager platforms: Zachary Levitt’s Opus One, Gary Selz’s Zero Delta Funds and Scott Treloar’s Noviscient. Many of the industry’s biggest firms, managing tens of billions of dollars, are multi-strategy, but the model can also work for smaller assets and niche strategies. These platforms could potentially allocate to some other managers in the report. 

The featured managers are not just first-time launches; some are onto their second, third or fourth launch. One, Priya Kodeeswaran of Katamaran, has re-launched the same TMT strategy at four firms over the course of 20 years. 

None of the managers have featured in previous Titans reports.

Strategy mix

Over 60% of the managers run discretionary strategies; over 20% run systematic strategies; and just under 20% are effectively hybrid. The largest group run discretionary equity long/short strategies with a sector focus, these include real estate for Argosy-Lionbridge, consumer for Telsey, cyclicals for Konektis, healthcare and technology for High Ground, biotech for Cutter Capital, decarbonisation related for Walnut Level, technology, industrials and renewables for 221B and transportation for West Brow. There is also a more thematic strategy, Sina Toussi’s Two Seas Capital, focused on litigation-driven events across sectors.

Long/short equity is the largest strategy group, but there are four managers trading equity volatility, four trading commodities, three trading currencies, and one in each of convertibles, Nordic high yield, US municipal bonds, while another focuses on litigation finance and government receivables. There are also two managers specialised in equity capital markets, of which one, Lykos, is something of a hybrid public/private strategy that also does pre-IPO private equity.

Systematic strategies include alternative markets trend followers Gresham and Ocean Leonid. Many managers, including Vadantia and Terreplein, are using AI and machine learning for part of their process. Sydney Quantitative, Omphalos Fund and Artellium run dedicated AI and machine learning strategies.

Previous firms

Artellium started their careers in strategy consulting at McKinsey and Roland Berger, while the founders of Omphalos worked in technology before applying it to finance. But most managers have previously worked for other large asset managers, hedge funds or former family offices of erstwhile hedge fund managers. They include giants such as Allianz Global Investors, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brahman Capital, Brevan Howard, Caxton, Citadel (and affiliates), D.E. Shaw, Man Investments, Millennium Management, Moore Capital, Pictet, SAC Capital Advisors/Point72 Capital Management, RWC, Tudor, Soros, TCI, VR Capital and York Capital. Other managers hailed from smaller and medium sized firms, including Edesia Asset Management, FORT Investment Management and Majedie. One worked for Stanford University’s endowment manager, Stanford Management Company. A few were proprietary traders at Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Xanthus Capital, Chimera Securities and Epoch Capital.

Locations

Twenty one are located in the Americas; eighteen in the US, one in Cayman, one in Quebec, Canada and one, WHG, in Brazil. Outside the US Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, there are managers in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Denver, Colorado; Matthews, North Carolina; Chicago; Los Angeles; San Francisco and its neighbour Oakland.

Twenty three of the managers are based in Europe. Thirteen are in the UK, four in Germany, two in Switzerland, two in Sweden, one in the Netherlands, one in Cyprus and one in Poland – the first manager physically based in Eastern Europe to feature in Titans. Two managers are based in Asia Pacific, in Sydney and Singapore.

ESG and impact

The managers pursue ESG from different angles. At management company level, Evovest is a certified B-corp. Walnut Tree picks winners from decarbonisation, Iguana demands a decarbonisation trajectory and 221B trades renewables. Legalist is pursuing impact investing via litigation funding and lending to disadvantaged minority groups. Intalcon, Iguana and 221B have formally committed percentages of income to impact-oriented charities.

Diversity

Six of the featured managers are women founders or strategy heads: Dana Telsey at Telsey Consumer Fund, Irene Perdomo at Ocean Leonid, Eva Shang at Legalist, Jillian McIntyre at 221B, Dr Silvia Stanescu at Aspect and Dr Maria Papakokkinou at IXI. Other women-founded alternative asset managers also feature in our annual 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds report, published in association with EY, and our Private Markets: 50 Women Leaders report, published in association with Citco.

Seeders

Seeders are not always publicly disclosed, but we can highlight a few. Scandinavia’s largest hedge fund manager, Brummer & Partners of Sweden, regularly seeds new funds such as Katamaran, and Stable Asset Management remains active. In Canada, seeders include Quebec Emerging Managers’ Program. In Germany, Artellium was seeded by First Private. Parag Pande’s Konektis was seeded by the family office of former Blackstone executive, Hamilton “Tony” James, and is a relatively rare case where a family office seeder is disclosed. Most unusually, Legalist was supported by a venture capital firm, Y Combinator.

Platforms and service providers

Some managers work with larger prime brokers including BNP, Goldman Sachs, Jeffries, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, Scotia and UBS, while Interactive Brokers serves many smaller and newer ones.

Vehicles

Most managers have Cayman, Luxembourg or Ireland funds for professional investors but Epoch sits on Swedish retail platforms that can accept as little as SEK 100 – about 10 USD.

UCITS funds are run by firms including Green Ash Partners, ThirdYear Capital, Artellium, Intalcon and Empureon, while the Trium Epynt Macro strategy is a sleeve of Trium’s multi-strategy UCITS fund.

A few managers currently only run managed accounts and/or sit on managed account platforms, but some of them expect to launch funds soon.

Conclusion

Titans is our most unpredictable project with new locations and strategies cropping up every year. Our ongoing outreach, research and industry dialogue also identifies a steady stream of pre-launch managers who are likely to land in future reports.