Goldman Sachs took the No. 1 spot in Alpha Magazine list of the 100 largest hedge fund management firms.
Goldman Sachs, which has more than $21 billion in single-manager hedge funds, has seen a jump in assets under management of more than 85% and $9 billion in each of the past two years.
But Goldman Sachs only beat the No. 2 and 3 ranked firms by a nose.
No. 2 Bridgewater Associates and No. 3 D.E. Shaw Group also grew by more than $9 billion in assets, a testament to pension funds’ and other institutions’ increasing interest for scalable hedge fund investment strategies.
Rounding out the top five, last years top spot-holder Farallon Capital Management fell to No. 4 despite a nearly $4 billion rise in assets and ESL Investments. The firm ended 2005 with an estimated $15 billion in assets, including some $4 billion in cash.
Overall, the Hedge Fund 100 firms managed a combined $720 billion in single-manager hedge fund assets as of December 2005, a nearly 27% increase from the $568 billion firms on the list oversaw a year ago.
The Hedge Fund 100 firms comprise nearly two thirds of the hedge fund industry’s $1.1 trillion in assets.