Best Overall Group: Winner

Stockholm-based Brummer & Partners was founded in 1995 by Patrik Brummer. The group launched Sweden's first hedge fund in 1996. It has been seen as one of the leaders in the Scandinavian hedge funds industry.

Founded by Patrik Brummer and some close colleagues who worked together at the Nordic investment bank Alfred Berg, Brummer & Partners.

The product range consists of 10 non-correlated single strategy hedge funds and several offshore funds (which are identical in strategy to the onshore versions).

All its funds are domiciled in Sweden except Avenir, domiciled in Finland, Bermuda domiciled Karakoram and Cayman domiciled Observatory Credit Market fund. Bermuda-domiciled versions of Archipel, Lynx and Nektar are also available, managed by B&PAM.

The suite of Brummer & Partners' hedge funds includes Arbor Market Neutral European equity fund, Archipel, a global quant market neutral long/short equity fund; Avenir, a Nordic quant long/short equity fund; Futuris, a European long/short equity with a Nordic focus;  which are fund of funds; Karakoram, an Asian long/short equity fund; Lynx, a managed futures/CTA fund; Mantiore, a global long/short equity fund with an IT and media focus, Nektar, a Fixed Income, Relative Value macro fund; Observatory credit markets fund, and Zenit, a global long/short equity fund.

It is the largest hedge fund group in the Nordic region. In addition to its single funds it also set up a fund administration company, B&P Fund Services, a unit-linked insurance business (Brummer Life) and an international fund of funds business.

Brummer & Partners' business concept is to offer a well-diversified portfolio of investment products while bringing together skilled fund managers with different investment strategies in a single corporate group. The goal is to generate a competitive risk-adjusted return.

Since 2002 Brummer & Partners has also been offering Brummer Multi-Strategy (previously called Helios), which can invest across the group's hedge funds. A leveraged version is also available; Brummer Multi-Strategy 2xL.

The bulk of investors in Brummer & Partners (around 70%) comes from the Nordic region. The group has also been supported and encouraged by the regulatory framework in Sweden and Finland which early on laid down comprehensive supervisory rules for the hedge fund industry including a high level of transparency and investor protection.

Brummer & Partners has also opened up its hedge fund products to a wider range of retail investors through Brummer Life, a fund marketplace where savers can invest online in the Brummer Multi-Strategy fund and the group's other actively managed funds individually or in combination.

While many funds lost assets over the crisis period, total assets under management (AUM) at Brummer & Partners' increased from around Skr 35 billion ($4.5 billion) to Skr 54 billion ($6.9 billion) between 2007 and 2009, putting it firmly into the 'billion dollar club' of hedge funds.

In 2009 particularly strong performances came from two of the stable's single-strategy funds: Nektar with a 38.03% return and Manticore with 27.0%.

In July 2009 the company launched the Singapore-based Karakoram Fund.

In February 2010 the group added its first London-based manager to its stable through a partnership with credit markets specialist Observatory, bringing the Brummer stable up to 10 individual single strategy funds plus the Brummer Multi-Strategy fund.