Many hedge fund managers have reason to cheer even as their investors grouse about lacklustre returns; they are on track to reap a much larger pay-day for 2016 than for 2015. "There have been a lot of reports about hedge fund compensation being down this year but that is misleading," said Adam Zoia, chief executive officer of Glocap, the largest investment management search firm which tracks hiring and pay in the hedge fund industry.
"The headline here is that pay is up for star performers this year." And the jump is expected to be large, according to the 2017 Glocap Hedge Fund Compensation Report which was reviewed by Reuters.
At top performing funds, investment managers' bonuses are on track to be up as much as 11 percent. Portfolio managers at poorly performing funds will see bonuses shrink by as much as 7 percent, the report said.
Hedge funds became famous more than a decade ago for delivering eye-popping returns, but more recently the industry as been criticised for its high fees and low returns, prompting many pension funds to pull money out. Even as the average hedge fund is earning returns only in the low single digits, portfolio managers at the best performing funds are likely to earn 6.6 times more than those at the industry laggards, the data from CompIQ show.