HedgeFund.net (HFN) has published its third survey of hedge fund industry administrators sponsored by Advent Software. The Q1 2008 Hedge Fund Administrator Survey covers over 60 hedge fund administrators reporting $2.759 trillion in assets under administration (AUA) in 13,804 hedge funds. Results include rankings by total $AUA, by region, by regional concentration and fastest growing single manager hedge fund and fund of funds (FoF) administrators.
To see the full ranking tables, top 10 rankings and commentary, visit the survey homepage at www.hedgefund.net
The top three hedge fund administrators reporting AUA were Citco Fund Services, Citi and HSBC Securities Services. The three combined reported almost $1 trillion in single manager hedge fund assets. Citco was the largest administrator of North America and Europe based hedge fund assets and HSBC was the largest administrator of Asia based assets. The survey also covered 54 FoF administrators reporting $1.389 trillion in AUA in 6,562 FoFs. The top three reporting FoF administrators were Citco Fund Services, UBS Global Asset Management – Fund Services and HSBC Securities Services.
Kingsway Taitz, based in Sydney, Australia was the fastest growing hedge fund administrator followed by Equity Fund Services and Citadel Solutions. Citadel ranked as the fastest growing FoF administrator in Q1 2008 followed by JPMorgan Hedge Fund Services and Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild.
HFN also conducted a survey of managers that when combined with administrator information reported by all funds in the HFN database resulted in an estimate that over 96% of hedge fund assets globally use third party administration services. Additionally, HFN requested administrators report hedge fund assets separately from FoF assets to confirm no “double counting”. The result is that HFN is confident in estimating that total single manager hedge fund assets reached $2.848 trillion in Q1 2008 and that industry estimates significantly below this amount are drastically underestimating the size and global influence of the hedge fund industry.