Westport-based Bridgewater Associates was one of just a handful of the largest hedge funds to actually add assets last year, enough to make it that largest hedge fund manager in the world at the end of 2008, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.
The firm, which employs 650 workers at four Westport locations, topped the magazine’s 2009 Hedge Fund 100, the magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s biggest single-manager hedge fund firms, with $38.6 billion. This was $2.6 billion more than it managed at the end of 2007.
Bridgewater dethroned JPMorgan Asset Management, which had held the top spot for two years, as JPMorgan saw its hedge fund assets plummet 26.4 percent to $32.9 billion, Alpha said.
In all, the largest 100 hedge funds in the world managed 23.7 percent less than they had a year earlier, down to $1.03 trillion from $1.35 trillion, the record set at the end of 2007, the magazine said.
Congratulations to Bridgewater!