Over 500 of the leading players in the global fund of funds industry came together last night at the PierreHotel in New York for the fifth annual InvestHedge Funds of Funds Awards for the best risk adjusted performance among the global funds of funds universe.
Silver Creek Capital Management of Seattle, a winner of multiple awards in 2005, walked away with two awards at the Award ceremony, including Group of the Year, an accolade it also picked up last year. But this year the firm shared the limelight with Benchmark Plus of Tacoma, Washington.
Silver Creek, founded by Eric Dillon and Tim Flaherty in 1994, also took home the Emerging Managers Award for the third year running, while Benchmark Plus, founded by Robert Ferguson and Scott Franzblau in 1998, won prizes for the best big Global Multi-Strategy fund as well as for New Fund of the Year.
Among this year’s winners were many new names including Attalus Capital, winner of Institutional Firm of the Year, Alpha Beta Capital Management, winner of the new Leveraged Category, and SSR Capital Partners, which took home the new Asset Based Lending Award.
In this year’s awards, InvestHedge took into account the industry moving into more specialized strategy areas with the addition of five new award categories – including Commodities, Emerging Markets, and Event Driven & Distressed. The European Equity Award was won jointly by last year’s winner FRM Global Equity Fund SPC Europe and Key Asset Management’s Key Europe.
GAM Multi-Europe II took home the prestigious Fund of the Year award. In the last five years GAM and its funds have been nominated no less than 10 times and won four separate awards, while Silver Creek has now had some 19 nominations and eight wins. Permal, also a winner of multiple awards over the years, has had no less than 15 nominations.