AQR Capital

AQR Capital Management
Employee owned Limited Partnership
Industry Global Investment Management
Founded January 1998
Headquarters

Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S., with offices in

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
London, England, UK
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Cliff Asness, Ph.D.
Founding & Managing Principal
David Kabiller, CFA
Founding Principal
John Liew, Ph.D.
Founding Principal
AUM $135.3 billion (as of September 30, 2015)[1]
Number of employees
 589[1]
Website aqr.com

AQR Capital Management is an investment management firm founded in 1998 by former Goldman Sachs portfolio manager Clifford S. Asness along with partners David Kabiller, John Liew and Robert Krail (all also from Goldman). The firm began with a quantitative equity hedge fund and today offers a variety of quantitatively driven hedge fund and traditional investment vehicles to both institutional clients and financial advisors. The company is based in Greenwich, Connecticut.[2]

Investment style

The firm invests in public equity, public futures and options, public and private bonds and OTC derivatives across the globe, and also operates a reinsurance subsidiary in Bermuda. At the end of 2014, AQR Capital Management had $122.2 billion in assets under management for institutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, financial endowments, foundations and sovereign wealth funds, as well as registered investment advisors.[1][3] The firm pursues quantitative investment strategies based on academic studies[4] and economic fundamentals. It breaks its funds down into four categories:[5]

  1. Alternatives[4] - These seek to deliver attractive returns that are uncorrelated to traditional investments like stocks, bonds and real estate. They include traditional hedge fund strategies, like Convertible Bond Arbitrage and Systematic Global Macro, as well as Reinsurance and Real Return products. Alternative strategies were what the firm began with in 1998.
  2. Risk Parity[6] - These seek to spread risk-taking out equally among asset classes, taking advantage of diversification to deliver market returns at less than traditional market risk. AQR has been offering both standard and tactical versions of this approach since 2005.
  3. Traditional Benchmarked[7] - These are “long-only” strategies that do not employ leverage or short selling, unlike the other three categories. They hold common stocks and seek to beat an index fund in the same investment category. AQR offers funds with US, Global, International, Emerging Markets and Defensive equity benchmarks and has been running them since 2001.
  4. Smart Beta[8] - These funds seek to capture a pure exposure to a style, with no correlation to the stock market as a whole. AQR began this effort in 2006 and offers Value, Momentum, Carry and Defensive styles.

Awards received and given

In 2015, AQR’s Style Premia Strategy was named Best Hedged Provider at the 2015 AsianInvestor's Asset Management Awards.[9]

AQR received the 2015 Alternatives Award for the Global Risk Parity UCITS Fund at the annual CIO European Innovation Awards [10] and was named Most Innovative Hedge Fund in 2014 at the annual CIO Industry Innovation Awards. [11]

In 2014, AQR received the U.S. Investment Management Award from Institutional Investor in the Global Equity category[12] and the Thought Leadership Award from Funds Europe.[13]

In 2013, AQR was recognized as the Most Innovative Hedge Fund by Hedge Funds Review America. [14]

AQR received the 2013 Alternatives Fund Manager of the Year award from Morningstar, Inc.,[15] which cited AQR managers Brian Hurst and Yao Hua Ooi for the AQR Managed Futures fund.

AQR Capital Management was listed as one of the 100 Hedge funds to watch by the Financial Times,[16] which reported that the firm "takes a systematic, computer-assisted approach to investment involving both value and momentum factors applied to various asset classes" and views themselves as "fundamental rather than quantitative as they like to ‘understand the story’ behind their models rather than rely solely on data."[16]

AQR awards a $100,000 annual prize, the AQR Insight Award “to encourage and acknowledge academics whose research promises to be of significant use to institutional investors.”

In 2015, AQR Capital donated £10 million to the London Business School to set up an investment institute, to be named the AQR Institute of Asset Management.[21]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "AQR at a Glance". Retrieved 2015-11-28.
  2. ↑ "AMG Website". Retrieved 2012-03-31.
  3. ↑ AQR About
  4. 1 2 "AQR puts academic theory into practice". www.risk.net. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  5. ↑
  6. ↑ "100 Hedge funds to watch". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  7. ↑ "AQR Capital Management Launches Core Equity Mutual Funds". Reuters. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  8. ↑ "AQR goes after a smarter smart Beta". Investment News. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  9. ↑ "Asian Investor Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  10. ↑ "CIO Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  11. ↑ "CIO Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  12. ↑ "US Investment Awards Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  13. ↑ "Funds Europe Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  14. ↑ "Asian Investor Website". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  15. ↑ "Morningstar Website". Retrieved 2014-01-17.
  16. 1 2 "100 Hedge funds to watch" (PDF). www.ft.com. Retrieved 2010-04-19.
  17. ↑ "New research wins first annual AQR Insight award". Reuters. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  18. ↑ "Market return research wins 2013 AQR Insight Award" (PDF). Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  19. ↑ "Business Wire". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  20. ↑ "Business Wire". Retrieved 2015-06-08.
  21. ↑ "AQR gives London Business School £10m to build 'Davos of finance". The Financial Times. Retrieved 2014-01-05.

External links

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