Secretive GLG tops hedge fund charts

GLG Partners, the ultra-secretive hedge fund whose cult status makes its owners among Britain's biggest earners, has been declared London's most respected alternative investment house.

Run by £30m Noam Gottesman, 44, a former Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs private client fund manager, Mayfair-based GLG was voted as Britain's top-rated hedge fund by 7000 analysts, brokers, fund managers and investor relations professionals in the annual Thomson Extel Awards. It is the first time a hedge fund category has been included.

GLG has risen to become the powerhouse of European hedge funds with $11.2bn (£6.2bn) under management for some of the world's richest individuals as well as leading institutions.

Gottesman set up GLG with his ex-Lehman partners Pierre Lagrange and Jonathan Green 10 years ago. Green has since quit. The firm's other partners are Philippe Jabre, formerly of French bank BNP, and Manny Roman, who recently joined from Goldman.

GLG's success has brought Gottesman, who holds a 20% stake reckoned to be worth £200m, a jet-set lifestyle. He has lived at exclusive London addresses and has a penchant for luxurious business aircraft, preferring to charter customised Boeing 737s rather than the top-of-the-range Gulfstream V usually favoured by the ultra-rich.

GLG rarely appears on the share registers of London-listed companies although it became involved in Daniel Levy's struggle for control of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

There was much talk in the spring that GLG would float on the stock market or be bought out by Lehman. That speculation, however, has subsided amid investigations into the firm by British and French financial authorities and reports that its funds have been under pressure.

The Financial Services Authority and Paris's AMF have launched separate probes into the company's trades in convertible bonds.

GLG has admitted that its key $3.5bn convertible fund was down 7% in May, taking the overall fall in the fund in 2005 to 15%.

In the Thomson Extel Awards, GLG shrugged off a strong challenge from Lansdowne Partners, the stock-picking firm led by former Merrill Lynch star trader Stuart Roden. Among its recent shrewd investments, it cleaned up in the Malcolm Glazer takeover of Manchester United.

Third place went to Marshall Wace, run by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace. After eight years at the top of the London hedge fund scene, they last year picked up £26m each.

Neither of London's quoted hedge fund managers, Man Group and RAB Capital, made the top 10.