Abstract

With about $450 billion in assets, funds of hedge funds are the most recent darling of investors. While hedge funds carry high risk for the promise of high returns they are designed for the very rich and for large institutional investors such as pension funds. A Fund of Hedge Funds (FOF) spreads investments among a number of hedge funds to reduce risk and provide diversification, while maintaining the potential for higher than average returns. Odds are that some pension fund of yours is invested heavily in these products, and more recently these FOFs have been opened to more and more individual investors in offshore jurisdictions with lower minimum entry levels. Since this is a new and extremely fast-moving financial phenomenon, academic research has just begun in earnest, and this is the first book to present rigorous academic research by some of the leading lights in academic finance, carefully analyzing the broad array of issues involved in FOFs.
* With over $450 billion in assets, hedge funds of funds are the darling of investors
* First book to present rigorous academic research about funds of funds
* Leading lights in academic finance from around the world analyze the broad array of issues involved in funds of funds
"Want to learn all about hedge funds and funds of hedge funds and sift out the truth from the misconceptions? Then read this comprehensive assessment of the field. It goes from A to Z in coverage and together all the papers provide a good course in this fast growing and controversial subject."
-- William T. Ziemba, Alumni Professor of Financial Modeling and Stochastic Optimization (Emeritus), Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia
"Funds of hedge funds are fast emerging as one of the most popular alternative investment vehicles offering diversification, access to hedge funds that are closed for new investment, and due diligence. This great collection of research articles on funds of hedge funds will surely inform the readers about the pros and cons associated with investing in funds of hedge funds."
-- Vikas Agarwal, Assistant Professor of Finance, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

"The international demand for hedge funds from institutional investors is gaining more and more momentum. As most of this growth can be attributed to funds of hedge funds, this excellent new edited book couldn’t be more timely. Again, the editor has done an outstanding job of gathering contributions of great academic and practical use from some of the leading authorities in this area often considered as opaque. Fund of Hedge Funds is the definitive source of information for industry professionals, institutional investors and academics alike. A more comprehensive analysis of the Performance, Application and Risk Management of fund of hedge funds is hard to come by."
-- Dieter G. Kaiser, Institutional Research, Benchmark Alternative Strategies GmbH
"According to TASS Tremont, the fraction of hedge funds that are funds of funds has doubled over the past five years, to 28 percent of all hedge funds as of September 2005. Attention must be paid. Academics have only just recently started to become interested in this business. This book of readings is one the first published collections of original scholarly papers on this subject. It is of great interest to many academics as well as of course to the many practitioners who are in the business today or who would very much like to enter the fund of funds business."
-- Stephen J. Brown, David Loeb Professor of Finance, NYU Stern School of Business