The great and the good of the European hedge fund industry are arriving by plane, helicopter, superyacht and… bus (me) to Monaco today in preparation for the opening of the 2010 GAIM conference tomorrow – the hedge fund industry’s biggest annual bash.

Big-ticket names including Leda Braga – the Brazilian superquant behind Bluecrest’s BlueTrend fund – the Man Group’s Peter Clarke and IKOS’ Elena Ambrosiadou (yacht apparently in tow offshore – how many >250ft sailing yachts can their be?) are coming to ritzy Monte Carlo to speak on the future of the industry – and hopefully raise a little bit of money for their funds in doing so.

On the agenda at this year’s conference: courting new investors, industry consolidation – not least in the wake of the Man Group/GLG tie-up announced only weeks ago – dealing with the forthcoming EU rules on hedge funds, and of course, who lost, and who made, money in May.

Whatever difficulties fund managers may have experienced last month seem to have done little to dullen the mood here, however. Even if the weather is, as yet, a little overcast.

This year’s conference is already a very different one from 2009′s, when it was still unclear what kind of hedge fund industry would emerge after an estimated $500bn of redemptions following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in October 2008.

Over the course of the past year the industry has rebounded strongly. According to Chicago-based hedge fund research, the average fund returned nearly 20 per cent in 2009 and is up 1.28 per cent this year – a number all the more significant to investors given what has happened in the markets. The MSCI world index is currently down 7.51 per cent on the year.

FT Alphaville will be bringing you snippets of wisdom and gossip from the super rich and supercharming over the course of the next three days. Assuming I haven’t forgotten the charger for my laptop, as I did last year, anyway.

Related links
www.ft.com/hedgefunds
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This entry was posted by Sam Jones on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 17:54 and is filed under Capital markets, Hedge funds, People. Edit this entry.