Not dead yet

摘要

What is the least loved corner of high finance: hedge funds, with their plutocratic managers who so seldom match stockmarket returns, or private equity, where bosses pile debt onto companies to enrich themselves? Trick question, to which the answer is funds of funds-firms that charge heavy fees to put investors' money into an assortment of private-equity or hedge funds. Maligned as purveyors of "fees on fees" (levied by the funds of funds and then by the underlying funds), they have for years seemed destined for extinction. But new models point to some kind of future for the sector, albeit as a shadow of its former self.