Tomorrow’s Titans 2025. Fifty rising stars
The Hedge Fund Journalhas been publishing the Tomorrow’s Titans report on rising star hedge fund managers since 2010, and this is the eleventh edition. It has been an annual report since 2020, and since 2021 has run a mix of short and extended profiles.
Most managers featured in this year’s report launched their own firms, mostly in the past five years. Five managers have joined established firms: Pasquale Corvino took his award-winning US equity and options trading strategy to LFG to form LFG+Zest SA in Switzerland; derivatives prop traders Alexandre Ryo and Pierre Gallice developed their equity convexity strategy with Ellipsis in France; Pictet Asset Management may be most renowned for discretionary strategies, but it has attracted a growing team of quants who have launched an AI-powered equity market neutral strategy; Jerome Yim and Marco Barchman joined Challenger in Australia to roll out their multi-strategy cross asset systematic strategy; and Oliver Scharping moved to Berenberg in Munich to launch his merger arbitrage strategy as part of their liquid alternatives drive.
Some of our previous reports have been US dominated, but this year over half the Titans, twenty-nine in fact, are Europe based.
Two firms featured here, Tidan Capital and Coban Capital, could house new launches as new multi-strategy/multi-manager platforms, though with different business models and fee structures than the giant pod shops.
The largest group in the report are fifteen equity long/short managers including global, European, Asian, mid-cap and technology sector specialists. There is one activist, and one firm trading UK closed end funds. Quants include esoteric commodities, systematic macro and AI powered macro. Three managers trade volatility and option strategies, including option sellers, long convexity and tail risk strategies. Two trade global macro. Strategies in credit and fixed income include the “full cycle credit investing approach” espoused by Grant Nachman of Shorecliff; European specialists; event-driven stressed, distressed special situations experts; inflation linked securities traders and short-term interest rates (STIRS) traders. Three managers exclusively allocate to digital managers or trade digital assets.
Managers are mainly trading liquid public markets, though two managers have an element of exposure to private markets. One technology long/short manager, Octahedron, crosses over into private equity, and Upper90 pursues an innovative private credit strategy.
Prior firms
The report reveals some unconventional backgrounds. Marceau Dova’s and Ritik Katte’s MCD Capital started out as a student-led hedge fund; Karana’s Yuxi Li was a schoolteacher before trading equities, and MBH’s Mark Anderson worked in construction before trading ODTE options.
Many other managers come from larger firms such as BlueCrest, Brevan Howard, Brummer and Partners, BTG Pactual, Cheyne Capital, ING, JANA Capital, LMR Capital, Man GLG, M&G, Millennium Management, Oaktree Capital, Pictet, Point72, Tudor Investment Corporation, Wellington Management, Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund, and the UK’s largest pension fund, USS (the Universities Superannuation Scheme). A handful also hail from medium sized firms including Bantleon, Fulcrum Asset Management, Horseman Capital Management, Mudrick Capital, Pivot Capital and Quantedge Capital. Some traded for banks including Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Nomura. Some were at family offices including Peter Thiel’s.
Locations
Some of our previous reports have been US dominated, but this year over half the featured managers, twenty-nine in fact, are Europe based, with sixteen based in the UK, five in Switzerland, three in the Netherlands, two in Germany, and one in each of Czechia, Denmark, France, Jersey and Sweden. Sixteen are based in the US, taking in California, Florida, Virginia and Rhode Island, as well as the New York area. Six are in Asia Pacific: two in each of Singapore and Australia, and one in each of Hong Kong and India. One sits in South Africa.
2010
The Hedge Fund Journal has been publishing the Tomorrow’s Titans report on rising star hedge fund managers since 2010. This is the eleventh edition.
Diversity
Some women-led launches slated for this report have shut down to join multi-strategy pod shops. Kudos to the giant talent scouts, including Engineers Gate, who headhunted these women before we had a chance to publish!
Regrettably we only feature two women lead managers: Yuxi Li of Karana Capital and Tumi Loate of 36ONE, but in other featured firms some co-founders are women, such as Lyndsey Starr at Haverstock Capital and Jue Huang at Vigama Capital. Other women-founded alternative asset managers feature in our annual 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds report, published in association with EY, and the 2024 and 2025 editions of Private Markets: 50 Women Leaders report, published in association with Citco.
Seeders
Day one investors, seeders and providers of acceleration capital are not always publicly disclosed, but we can highlight a few. Canadian pension fund CPPIB has seeded a fund at Stefan Tsonev’s Sternlight Capital. Stable Asset Management seeded Ananym. Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs have backed Octahedron, and a Texas endowment was a day one investor in another manager featured in this report.
Most of the firms in this report launched with personal, friends and family capital (including their own family offices that are rarely mentioned), and there may be “early bird” share classes for other investors in some cases.
Service providers
We are noticing Marex (which acquired Cowen in 2023) pop up more often as a prime broker for emerging managers, and IKBR is often serving the smaller ones, while ABN Amro, BTIG, Jefferies, Linear Investments, StoneX (which acquired R.J. O’Brien earlier this year), Societe Generale and Wedbush Securities are also visible, in addition to the ever present bulge bracket names such as Barclays, BAML, BNP, Citi, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS. It is difficult to generalise about particular brokers’ appetites for smaller managers as there often seem to be exceptions to popular rules of thumb.
Regulatory hosts can help to expedite launches. Firms hosting UK-based managers in this report include Capricorn Fund Managers Limited, Eschler Capital Management, G10 Capital (part of IQ-EQ), Mirabella Financial Services LLP, Tavira Securities, Thornbridge Investment Management LLP and Vittoria and Partners LLP.
Vehicles
Some managers including Berenberg, Calibrate, Ellipsis, Pictet and Vigama have launched UCITS, but the majority are using other sorts of fund structures and some run managed accounts.
Conclusion
Some managers from past reports have grown into multi-billion-dollar managers, others have stayed small, and inevitably some have closed or taken their strategies to larger platforms. With the hedge fund industry seeing record inflows in the third quarter of 2025 as institutional investors increase their hedge fund allocations, our level of confidence in the 2025 cohort becoming giant managers is greater than usual.
