Hedge Fund Managers Are Winning: 2015 Another Year of 'Outrageous Compensation'

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/11/hedge-fund-managers-are-winning-2015-anothyear-outrageous-compensation

2015 was a "another year of outrageous hedge fund compensation," said Robert Weissman, president of advocacy organization Public Citizen.

Sparking his statement is the latest Rich List published by Institutional Investor's Alpha magazine, which reveals that the industry's top 25 managers made an average of $517.6 million, and had combined earnings of $12.94 billion.

The men at the top five spots all earned over $1 billion.

Topping the list are Kenneth Griffin of Citadel and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who each took in $1.7 billion. Simons has the distinction of being the only manager to appear on the list for its entire 15-year history. Griffin, the New York Times reports, "was the biggest donor to the successful re-election campaign of Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. More recently he has poured more than $3.1 million into the failed presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, as well as the Republican National Committee.

Reuters adds:

The higher payday came "despite the fact that roughly half of all hedge funds lost money last year," said Institutional Investor Editor Michael Peltz. He added that "about half of the 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers used computer-generated investment strategies to produce their investment gains."