[High twaddle indeed. Classical statistical mechanics have zip, zilch, nada to do with income distribution. Wealth inquisition in this benighted, anything-goes capitalist society is governed entirely by one simple principle: "You have arms, you take."]
April 24, 2007 Top Hedge Fund Managers Earn Over $240 Million By JENNY ANDERSON and JULIE CRESWELL
James Simons, a 69-year-old publicity shy former math professor, uses complex computer-driven mathematical models to make bets on stocks, bonds and commodities, among other things.
His earnings last year were $1.7 billion.
As one of the leading hedge fund managers, Mr. Simons makes a sum that dwarfs that of the top chiefs on Wall Street. The highest paid on the Street, Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, earned $54.3 million in salary, cash, restricted stock and stock options last year. (Unlike the total for Mr. Simons, Mr. Blankfein’s reported compensation does not include gains on investments.)
And Mr. Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, is not the only member of the billion-dollars-a-year club.
Two other hedge fund managers, Kenneth C. Griffin and Edward S. Lampert, each took home more than $1 billion last year, with George Soros missing the hurdle by a hair, give or take $50 million, according to an annual ranking of the top 25 hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out today.
The rewards for managing hedge funds — lightly regulated private investment pools for institutions like endowments and wealthy individuals — have been lucrative for some time. Yet the survey also shows that for the hedge fund elite, the rich are getting much richer in a hurry.
To make Alpha’s list, a manager needed to earn at least $240 million last year, nearly double the amount in 2005. That is up from a minimum of $30 million in 2001 and 2002. Combined, the top 25 hedge fund managers last year earned $14 billion — enough to pay New York City’s 80,000 public school teachers for nearly three years.
With the modern gilded age in full swing, hedge fund managers and their private equity counterparts are comfortably seated atop one of the most astounding piles of wealth in American history.
Their ascendancy has been aided by an inflow of money from pension funds and other big investors, robust markets and fee-based compensation that can produce staggering amounts of individual wealth.
Naturally, some look upon these masters of the new universe as this generation’s robber barons, using wealth to create wealth, often in secretive ways, and leaving little that is tangible in their wake. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/business/24hedge.html?pagewanted=print>
Carl
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