Veteran Hedge Fund Investor Hits Back at Fees, Consultants

通过在1980年投资Tiger Management开始他的对冲基金职业的TED Caldwell，已经拥有高收费。他责备他们在大型机构投资者上支付对冲基金的任何一亚博赞助欧冠点，无论他们要求什么，使得较小的投资者不可能像他一样，谈判审慎的条款。

Caldwell has been investing in hedge funds for well over three decades. His family began putting some of their own wealth into what were then private pools of capital for high-net-worth individuals in 1980, and in 1993 he formed his own fund-of-hedge funds firm near Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Caldwell knew the chances of hedge funds finding his new firm, Lookout Mountain Capital, were remote. So he began writing a newsletter about his experiences and views as a hedge fund investor.

That newsletter, Lookout Mountain Hedge Fund Review, gave Caldwell a following. Top hedge fund managers, including the protégés of Alfred Jones and many of the so-called Tiger Cubs who had earlier worked for Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson, found their way to Lookout Mountain. Caldwell retired the newsletter in 1996, but recently revived it. And he did so with one topic on his mind: hedge fund fees.

“It’s past time to replace today’s hedge fund fee standards with a prudent system that will continue to attract superior manager prospects, but afford superior fees to only those who deliver superior performance,” Caldwell wrote in his fourth quarter 2016 issue of Lookout Mountain Hedge Fund Review.

许多对冲基金投资者同意考试基金费用的Caldwell的断言 - 通常是2％的管理费和20％的绩效费用 - 太高。例如，德克萨斯州德克萨斯州和犹他州退休系统的教师退休系统一直在争取他们对冲基金经理的较低费用。和Paul Tudor Jones上个月延迟宣布投资者，在他的旗舰基金的一年后，他在不到两年的时间内第二次削减了他的费用。但投资者较少将同意考德威尔对谁负责当前对冲基金费用的评估：投资顾问。

“我对顾问感到不安，”卡尔德威尔说。他说，“顾问为养老基金和其他机构投资者提供了一个糟糕的服务，通过鼓励他们支付不提供真正阿尔法的资金的高额费用。亚博赞助欧冠

Caldwell says that he’s been proposing his own fee model to hedge funds for the past 20 years. As described in his fourth quarter 2016 newsletter, Caldwell’s Superior Risk Adjusted Performance (SRAP) model would pay managers only for outperformance against a defined benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis. Under his model Caldwell pays up to 20 percent performance fee to managers, with the performance measured on a risk adjusted basis against a benchmark hurdle. If Caldwell chooses to -- and only if he chooses to -- he may pay managers an upfront performance fee, or what he calls a draw, of up to 2 percent, which they then have to pay back through the performance fee. If a manager is large enough to not need money upfront for operating costs, there would be no such fee at all.

While Caldwell has seen about six buyers for his SRAP approach, he says that “true” hedge funds, or long-short managers able to perform through up and down markets, already operate in such a way that produces the same outcome. That is, investors pay for alpha on a risk adjusted basis.

根据Chaldwell的说法，许多“伟大的对冲基金经理”从原来的投资风格飘走了。他说，他们“被这场新的衍生品投资煽动了这一波衍生物投资诱惑”和宏观投资。“他们在早期没有做出了很多赌注，他们远离真正的对冲基金。”

资产管理咨询公司凯西古怪的校长Jonathan Doolan同意对冲基金行业的相当风格漂移促成了留下许多经理必须向投资者解释其价值的绩效问题。“太多人才能推广叫对冲基金的产品，不再真正对冲基金，”他说。然而，杜兰杜兰认为，尽管不断减少费用，但甚至最大的最大的，最熟悉的公司不必提供大量折扣。

Jonathan Koerner, head of implementation at hedge fund investment consulting firm Albourne Partners bristled at the suggestion that hedge-fund fees are largely the fault of consultants and their institutional investor clients. Institutional investors didn’t get “a seat at the table,” until after 2008, says Koerner. Working with the $134 billion Texas Teachers Retirement System, he has proposed a “1 or 30 fee model,” which is receiving widespread industry interest. The structure gives managers a one percent management fee or a thirty percent performance fee, applied to the returns above an appropriate performance benchmark. The one percent management fee is paid back through a discount in the performance fee.

Since 2008, Koerner says managers have mainly taken a “divide-and-conquer” approach, working with investors one at a time and “solving nothing at an industry level.” Only recently have investors joined “together with a more unified voice,” says Koerner, who sees them coalescing behind some variation of his 1 or 30 approach. The approach is designed to ensure asset managers still make enough money during tough times to keep the lights on, but that investors retain 70 percent of the economics on a risk and performance adjusted basis.

Caldwell, however, thinks that the 70/30 split is still way too generous.

“To go from 20 to 30 percent is simply giving managers a 50 percent raise,” he says. “It’s consultants coming up with a dumb idea and it’s another way for pension funds to pay too much in fees.”