16 Richest Hedge Fund Managers in the World
In this article, we discuss the 16 richest hedge fund managers in the world and their top stock picks.
William Reeves and Michael Platt founded alternative asset management company BlueCrest Capital Management LP in 2000. Prior to founding their own fund, both men were managing directors and senior proprietary traders at JP Morgan & Co. Michael Platt got hooked on investing at a very young age thanks to his grandmother, who was an equity trader. When he was 14 years old, he invested £500 in British shipping line Common Brothers and got back three-times that amount. Michael Platt holds a Bachelor of Arts/Science from London School of Economics, while BlueCrest Capital's co-founder William Reeves has an interesting background for a hedge fund manager: Bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and an MA in Philosophy from New York University.
Michael Platt and William Reeves' London-based fund, BlueCrest Capital Management has expanded greatly in the nearly two decades since its founding, opening offices in New York City, Boston, Geneva, and Singapore. Since its inception, Blue Crest Capital Management LP has gone through several corporate changes. In 2008 the fund became BlueCrest Capital Management LLP, which was succeeded in 2014 by BlueCrest Capital Management Limited. Those corporate changes had no effect on the way the fund conducted its business, but in December 2015 a more noteworthy structural change happened, as the fund became a private investment partnership, returning all capital to third party investors.
That shift ended up being the best move BlueCrest Capital Management ever made, despite a storied history up to that point that included it holding around $35 billion in assets under management at one point. After turning the fund into a family office, it has generated eye-popping net returns of 50% in 2016 and 54% in 2017.
