6
I
Citi Prime Finance’s 2011 IT Trends & Benchmarks Survey
Methodology
The focus of this inaugural report is on hedge fund managers
in the U.S. and Europe, and on those possessing a global
footprint. Citi Prime Finance will release a separate IT survey
on managers in the Asian-Pacifc region later this year to better
focus on the trends in that region.
To ensure that the data presented in this report is relevant
to all of our clients and prospects, we have engineered a
comprehensive approach to collecting information.
Three methods were used: an online survey captured
information directly from IT decision makers at a representative
set of hedge funds covering various AUM bands, strategies and
vintages; primary interviews were conducted with a sample set
of hedge fund CTOs, CFOs and COOs to discuss their IT plans
and experiences; and primary interviews were done across a
broad set of hedge fund IT vendors and service providers to
understand their client interactions and concerns.
Triangulating quantitative and qualitative data from these
three sources garnered us a holistic and broad view of the
hedge fund technology landscape. In total, Citi Prime Finance
collected information from more than 75 hedge funds and 15
vendors to formulate the fndings in this report.
The profle of the 53 hedge funds providing actual benchmark
data is highlighted below. AUM thresholds used to defne the
hedge fund segments cited in this report (small, medium, large
and franchise) were based on research presented earlier this
year by Citi Prime Finance in our publication entitled
Pension
and Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment in Hedge Funds: The
Growth and Impact of Direct Investing.
These categories relate
to important institutional investor perceptions about the hedge
fund market and align to how these increasingly dominant
providers of capital determine many of their allocation
decisions.
Welcome to the frst annual Citi Prime Finance Hedge Fund IT Trends & Benchmark survey. The intent of this
paper is twofold: to provide an independent set of metrics that offer insight into hedge funds’ IT spend and
approach, and to understand how those metrics are likely to shift over time given key IT trends and how they’ve
shaped the industry in recent years.
Methodology
Profile of Survey Respondent AUM
Source: Citi Prime Finance
Large
($3B - 5B)
Small
(Less than
$500M)
Franchise
(Over $5B)
Medium
($500M - 3B)
43%
13%
21%
23%
Global
Emerging
US
Only
Developed
(US, UK, JAP,
Western Europe)
Geographic Investment Focus
Source: Citi Prime Finance
51%
24%
19%
6%
43%
Vintage of Survey Respondents
More than
10 Years Old
27%
5 - 10
Years Old
19%
2 - 5
Years Old
Less than
2 Years Old
Source: Citi Prime Finance
11%
Profle of Survey Respondents
Source: Citi Prime Finance