Bridgewater Associates, a US fixed income and currency manager, is the fastest growing asset manager over the past five years, according to research by Financial News.
The group has boosted its assets by 500% to $150bn (€118bn) since 2000 and closed its $30bn hedge fund, Pure Alpha, to new money in the first half of this year. Pure Alpha, which started trading in 1989, ranks as one of the third largest hedge funds in the world, alongside Goldman Sachs Asset Management and JP Morgan's Highbridge Capital Management. Founder Ray Dalio said Bridgewater had reached capacity in all its active strategies and closed to new business. He does not want to distort the proportionality of his bets, particularly in less liquid markets, such as emerging market debt and index linked bonds. GMO, a $121bn US value manager which has grown by 362% since 2000, is the second fastest growing manager over the same period. It lost assets before the stock market collapse in 2001 when some investors were frustrated by chairman Jeremy Grantham's avoidance of growth stocks. Its focus on value shares made it one of the best performers in the last five years. Russell, which hired GMO for its first UK equity fund, has stayed with the group over the past decade. Steve Wiltshire, European chief investment officer at Russell said: "It's a classic example of staying the course. They stuck to their knitting and we stuck with them. Performance was poor in the late 1990s but that befits their style. We too often see pension funds chasing three-year records and it rarely works." Fund managers that suffered negative growth are Putnam Investments, down 54% since 2000, and Janus Capital Group, down 39%, according to the poll. Putnam and Janus have seen high outflows since they were named in the market timing scandal of 2003. Performance has been poor at Putnam and in Janus' fundamental equity business. However, Janus' quantitative equity manager, Intech, has had positive inflows and represents a third of the group's assets under management. Goldman Sachs Asset Management is the fastest growing of the bank-owned asset managers with growth of 121% to $532bn.
