The “billion dollar club” of hedge funds continues to dominate the hedge fund world, says
PerTrac in its latest report on the sector.

Single-manager funds with assets over the $1 billion mark account for “a mere 3.9 per cent” of reporting funds, according to PerTrac, but represent more than 60 per cent of total single-manager hedge fund assets.

For both single- and multi-manager, the total number of funds grew 3.7 per cent from 2010 to 2011, hitting 13,395 reporting funds. Assets under management expanded along similar lines, by 3.4 per cent, to $2.2 trillion at the end of last year, according to PerTrac.

Of these, single-manager funds accounted for 10,007 funds at the end of last year, having seen growth of just under 7 per cent in 2011.

The US makes up the lion’s share of the global industry, accounting for 42.3 per cent of AuM, followed by the UK, at 25.6 per cent. However, the proportion of funds that reported being domiciled in the US fell year-over-year by 2.6 percentage points.

While PerTrac cites the reporting requirements of Dodd-Frank and the changing tax code as possible contributors to this fall in numbers, it says that “the reason for this decline in US domiciled funds is not clear and would require a separate study unto itself.”