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First published 31 Aug 2014

All new names populate the 2014 Tomorrows Titans survey. Arguably at least half of those in our 2010 and 2012 surveys are worthy repeats based on continuing asset growth and performance but this year we want to prioritize the showcasing of new talent that we have not covered before.

Aside from that, the process follows the pattern of previous surveys. We contact allocators including family offices, funds of funds, pension funds, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, and service providers. Nominators remain anonymous and the long list of nominations reached a couple of hundred names. Fifty names are selected on a mix of criteria performance, assets, pedigree, reputation and testimonials. The geographic split is broadly proportional to industry assets with the USA home to most hedge fund assets, Europe in second place, and Asia third.

An important new trend is managers breaking away from funds in the 11-figure bracket (assets above $10 billion) and launching hedge funds aiming at, and often quickly hitting, the 10-figure bracket the billion-dollar club. Inflows can mount up swiftly when former employers are closed to new investors as Herbert Wagners old shop, The Baupost Group, is. Even when giants are open, more entrepreneurial managers may want to run their own firm: as with Alex Denner of Sarissa who was at Icahn; ex-Redwood Rich Barrerra who founded Roystone Capital; one time Ziff Brothers manager Wui Yen Liow who started Aravt Global; and Sachem Heads Scott Ferguson, and Marcatos Mick McGuire, both of whom were formerly at Bill Ackmans Pershing Square.

The morphing of other huge hedge funds into family offices has been another driver of bulge bracket launches. Some luminaries of the hedge fund industry are no longer accepting external assets. Soros Asset Management, and SAC (now renamed as Point 72) have effectively converted into family offices. Both of these behemoths are now spawning new hedge funds. One ex-SAC manager is Jason Karp of 2012 launch Tourbillon, which already has around a billion dollars of assets. Three ex-Soros managers are Keith Anderson of Anderson Global Macro, and Michael Yoshino and Kenneth Lee of upcoming Hong Kong launch Pleiad.

As always we have to enter into the customary caveat that any survey of this kind must omit abundant talent, so our list of 50 names should be viewed as a selection of examples of potential future hedge fund industry leaders and not as an exclusive list. As well as ruling out former survey constituents, space constraints force us to overlook a huge number of very high calibre nominations this time. If there are 10,000 hedge funds worldwide, it seems likely that many hundreds could be tomorrows titans and may indeed appear in future surveys. In particular we received many nominations of female portfolio managers, some of whom may find their way into next years Leading Women in Hedge Funds survey. We will happily wager that many of this years names will be running 11-figure levels of assets within a decade from now, and will measure their net worth in 10 figures.