Fortune writes: even among hedge fund brainiacs, Cliff Asness qualifies as a high achiever. In just 13 years Asness has built his firm, AQR Capital, into one of the industry's half-dozen biggest players, with $42 billion in assets under management. Leading a team of 29 Ph.D.s at AQR's elegant offices in Greenwich, Conn., he runs the equivalent of an ultra-advanced research lab for financial products. Asness, 45, is a Ph.D. himself who narrowly chose managing money over a professorship and remains influential in academic circles. That's the elixir for his success. When he designs a market-beating strategy, his data are so convincing that he gets the research community overwhelmingly on his side. The sway of his science gives him just the right pitch to keep gathering assets from America's big institutional investors.
But Asness isn't content just to expand his hedge fund kingdom and burnish his standing in academia. He has recently begun moving into an area where hedge fund wizards have seldom ventured and where, at least for today, most have no desire to go: mutual funds. Asness is now offering sophisticated strategies to the broad public that for years have been available only to institutional clients.
His move into mutual funds could reshape the investing world in two important ways. First, it might well spawn a wave of imitators. AQR already offers a suite of nine mutual funds that have attracted a substantial $5.5 billion in assets. The products are proving so attractive to financial advisers that other hedgies are sure to recognize the potential in providing hedge-fund-style products to America's 401(k) crowd….
Wait…wait…there’s more at http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/12/19/cliff-asness-aqr-hedge-fund/
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