Coming back from the brink is never easy. With the rush by investors to exit the hedge fund industry over, assets under management have stabilised but are not yet showing much growth. Man Group’s funds under management barely budged in the third quarter. US-listed GLG managed a 13 per cent rise quarter-on-quarter. Yet investors’ renewed focus on transparency and protective investment structures such as managed accounts benefits these establishment funds, rather than smaller outfits.

For GLG – which bought Société Générale’s UK-based long-only equities business this year – market-driven flight merely compounded the impact of star manager Greg Coffey’s departure. His funds accounted for about $7bn of the $10bn that vanished during 2008. In the lossmaking third quarter, the group saw modest inflows, aside from performance gains.