The top 10 hedge funds made $28bn for clients in the second half of last year, $2bn more than the net profits of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and HSBC combined, according to new data.
Even the biggest of the hedge funds have only a few hundred employees, while the six banks employ 1m between them. According to the data, the top 10 funds have earned a total of $182bn for investors since they were founded, with George Soros making $35bn for clients – after all fees – since he set up his Quantum Fund in 1973.
But John Paulson’s Paulson & Co is closing in on Mr Soros’s fund as the hedge fund to have made most money for investors, after scoring net gains of $5.8bn in the second half of 2010.