FILTHY RICH-10 HIGHEST PAID HEDGE FUND MANAGERS

Ok, so it is excessive, but is this the real free market at work?

The top 25 managers averaged $464 million each in compensation for their work last year, some made more; James Simons was paid $2.5 BILLION last year. Bruce Kovner, a former NYC cab driver made $640 million last year (still drives the cab-just kidding, now a real CASH CAB.)

Would you turn down a $1 billion payment if it was offered to you by your board of directors for outstanding performance?

What would Barney Frank do with such bonuses?

Keep in mind that a billion does not go far these days, it is two AIRBUS 380 airplanes, that's all you get.

10 highest paid hedge fund managers of 2008

Stock markets across the world may have tanked last year but that didn’t stop the top performing hedge fund managers from making themselves a huge pile of cash.

In fact, the top 25 made £8.275 billion or an average of $464 million (£331m) each in 2008, according to research by Alpha Magazine. That is enough money to pay for 30 hospitals, employ more than 300,000 nurses for a year, or vaccinate every child in poverty from five preventable diseases.

Anyway, here is the list of the top 10, and how they made their millions (billions).

(Earnings have been calculated by adding each managers’ share of their firm’s performance and management fees, and gains on their own capital invested in their funds.)

Click here for our beginner’s guide to hedge funds.

1. James Simons, Renaissance Technologies Corp: $2.5 billion

Mr Simons generated an 80 per cent return for investors at his 20-year-old Medallion Fund last year. His exact investment strategy is a mystery but he says that it is based on rapid-fire trading across almost every possible market. Alpha Magazine says that his fund relies on computer-driven programs designed by an army of more than 100 Phds.

2. John Paulson, Paulson & Co: $2 billion

Mr Paulson also appears in our list of the 10 biggest winners of the financial crisis after he made millions in 2007 short selling risky pools of collateralized debt obligations. Last year he continued short selling and continued to make huge profits. However, Mr Paulson has felt the effects of the slump in the US housing market. Last year, he cut the asking price for his 6,800-square-foot Southampton, New York, home twice, by a total of $5.6 million, to $13.9 million.

3. John Arnold, Centaurus Energy: $1.5 billion

Energy trading John Arnold achieved an 80 per cent return at his Houston-based fund last year. The former Enron trader, who manages $5 billion in assets, deals mostly in natural gas, using futures and other derivatives.

4. George Soros, Soros Fund Management: $1.1 billion

Mr Soros’s $21 billion Quantum Endowment Fund eventually rose 8 per cent last year but it was a close call. In an annual review he published in the Financial Times, Mr Soros said he was losing money until bet correctly that the US dollar would fall. Mr Soros made his name and millions of pounds by betting against Sterling in the early 1990s.

5. Raymond Dalio, Bridgewater Associates: $780 million

Mr Dalio’s $38.6 billion Pure Alpha Strategy fund made 8.7 percent last year after a series of successful currency trades. Mr Dalio went long on the Japanese yen and shorted certain credit positions and emerging markets.

Although Mr Dalio’s is unlikely to suffer personally, he is very pessimistic about the future of the world economy. In his year-end letter, he wrote: "One of the most important lessons for those who did badly in 2008 is to have a ‘timeless and universal investment’ perspective" and to "understand what happened in long-ago times (e.g., the 1930s) and faraway places (like Japan and Latin America)."

6. Bruce Kovner, Caxton Associates: $640 million

Bruce Kovner, a former NY cab driver, made 13 per cent last year (after a 30 percent performance fee) on his $4.3 billion Caxton Global Investments fund . Most of the profit came from fixed-income investments.

7. David Shaw, D.E. Shaw & Co: $275 million

D.E. Shaw & Co.’s $13 billion macro fund was up about 7 per cent last year, offsetting most of the loss from its flagship $15 billion multistrategy fund, which ended 2008 down 8 to 9 percent.

8. Stanley Druckenmiller, Duquesne Capital Management: $260 million

Mr Druckenmiller made his money last year by reducing both his long and short exposures, instead building up cash. By the end of the year, he had cut his exposure to equities frop $5.8 billion to just $745 million. He also correctly bet on the dollar staging recovery last summer.

9. David Harding, Winton Capital Management: $250 million

Mr David Harding rode a number of trends — both up and down — including large moves in bonds, equity indexes and commodities (especially energy and grains), according to Alpha magazine. His $5.5 billion flagship Winton Futures Fund rose 21 per cent.

10. Alan Howard, Brevan Howard Asset Management: $250 million

Mr Howard’s Multi-Strategy fund made a 21 per cent gain in 2008 mostly from interest rate and foreign exchange arbitrage.