Looking for a career in hedge funds?

A decade ago, it would have been doubtful that many students – if any – from top universities around the world would have been contemplating a career in the hedge fund industry when they graduated. Back then, hedge funds would have been regarded by most as a pretty small and insignificant cottage industry – very much a sideshow to the main action in the financial world, and on the wilder fringes too. Most students contemplating a career in finance would have been looking for opportunities at the big institutional firms in banking, broking or asset management – if they were keen to avoid other mainstream professions such as accountancy or law – and would hardly have given a second thought to the idea of a career in the "cowboy" world of hedge funds.

A decade later, how things have changed. Indeed, just how much they have changed was emphasized to me by a top-quality event put on in London this January by the student union body of the London School of Economics. This was only the second year the LSE student group had held its own Alternative Investments Conference – including a day each on hedge funds and private equity. But applications for the 350 spaces available to attend the event at the Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden were heavily oversubscribed – with many students signing up to attend not only from LSE itself but also from other leading universities in the UK such as Oxford and Cambridge, plus many from elsewhere in Europe, from Asia and from the US.