Best Overall Group: Shortlisted

When your proposition has evolved from the amalgamation of two of the most established and successful hedge fund platforms, creating a company that manages 30 vehicles and has $21 billion in assets under management, there is one fundamental advantage you can leverage: scale.

"We make our scale work for our clients: managers have unrivalled access to corporate managements, information is shared across the organisation, our funds feel the benefit of having robust infrastructure behind them," says Doug Shaw, managing director of BlackRock Proprietary Alpha Strategies.

"Add to that the terms of trade we can achieve and the robustness we can bring to dealing with our counterparties, and you can see how scale can bring added advantages for our clients," he says.

BlackRock Proprietary Alpha Strategies is part of BlackRock Solutions, created by the merger in December 2009 of the brands BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors into an independent company with over $3 trillion in assets under management providing services for $9 trillion of assets.

The hedge fund arm, BlackRock Proprietary Alpha Strategies, manages $21 billion in 30 hedge funds across the product spectrum including fixed income, equity hedge, global resources, macro, specialised alpha and Ucits III-compliant hedge funds. Each strategy group is available in both fundamental and scientific or model-driven management styles.

BlackRock's scale means it has considerable influence in the industry and with regulators, says Shaw. "We put our influence in the industry to work for our clients," he explains. To this end, he and his colleagues at BlackRock frequently represent both the group and the industry in the UK and at European level. "We feel we have a responsibility to help shape the industry," Shaw notes.

Intensive and independent risk management is fundamental to the BlackRock proposition," he says. "Every portfolio is reviewed by our independent risk management group on a periodic basis. The head of the group feeds into the top of the investment process, speaking directly to the chief investment officer," adds Shaw.

He cites as an example the fact that while the company had "a good financial crisis" most of its funds defended capital and many made money. BlackRock tried to honour redemption requests at the agreed time even if the group took the tough decision to close one fund on risk management grounds.

"The focus is always on what is best for the client," explains Shaw. The company closed a credit strategy fund that was seeing large redemptions during the financial crisis. It had dropped from $850 million to $130 million at the time. It was closed because BlackRock did not think it could make the money back for the clients that remained in the fund. It was felt by the risk management team that the redemptions expected would damage the interests of clients who were not redeeming by leaving them with less liquid assets.

"It wasn't any easy decision but we shut down the fund because it was the only way we could treat customers fairly," says Shaw.

"Our ongoing mission is to consistently deliver performance, liquidity and transparency to our clients - to be sufficiently nimble and client and performance focused and to make our scale work for our clients," he concludes. "If you want a relationship with a company that knows what it is doing we are that firm."