Hedge Fund Relationship Managers

Alfred Winslow Jones launched the first hedge fund in 1949. He was not a financial expert, but a journalist and sociologist in his late-40s, who became enthusiastic about investing and was able to get $100,000 to set up a "hedged fund" (as he called it at the time). What we now know as hedge funds generated significant profits during the 1950s and 1960s. "Almost by accident, Jones improvised an investment structure that has endured to this day," according to More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, by Sebastian Mallaby

Today, more than 30,000 hedge funds operate worldwide with roughly $5.13 trillion in combined assets under management (AUM) as of Q2 2024, according to BarclayHedge. This was a significant increase from the 3,873 funds in 2000, and only 200 funds in 1968.

As the number of hedge funds and their financial structures grew more complex, the position of relationship manager emerged to serve as the go-between between the prime brokerage department (and other departments at the investment bank) and hedge funds.