GREEN HEDGE DAY

Results lag, but fatt pay for managers

Last year was brutal for hedge fund investors — but you wouldn’t know it from the fund managers’ paychecks.

The nation’s top 25 hedge fund honchos raked in a collective $11 billion in 2016 — down just $2 billion from a year earlier despite the industry’s worst year since the financial crisis, according to an annual survey by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

Notably absent from this year’s top 25 were Bill Ackman, whose soured bet on Valeant Pharmaceuticals lost $4 billion, and John Paulson, who racked up double-digit losses in what he called the “most challenging” year since his fund’s inception in 1994.

Still, former math professor Jim Simons managed to claim $1.6 billion in compensation, topping this year’s list, as the quantitative funds of his $42 billion Renaissance Technologies posted solid gains.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, earned $1.4 billion, according to the survey, even though Bridgewater’s flagship fund, Pure Alpha, gained just 2.4 percent.

To be sure, last year’s pie is roughly half of the $21 billion the top 25 hedgies earned three years ago.

Nevertheless, 2016’s compensation figures are more than double what they were

when the survey began in 2000, and came even though 2016 was only the third year since then that clients took more out of hedge funds than they put in.

And investors had good reason to yank $70 billion from the $3 trillion industry last year.

Despite funds relying on a “2 and 20” compensation model, in which they charge 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of profits, nearly half of the top 25 hedgies earned less than 10 percent for their investors in 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 gained 12 percent for investors on a dividend-adjusted basis for a fraction of the cost.

Sharing third place were John Overdeck and David Siegel, the founders of Two Sigma, who notched $750 million apiece. Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper came in fifth place with $700 million.

Elliott Management’s Paul Singer earned $590 million, landing him in seventh place.