Amid carnage at several high-profile US and European hedgefunds in August, it seems that smaller regional players fared much better.  With credit-dependent strategies taking it on the chin last month (the HFRX Macro Index, for example, was off 7.4%), it turns out that Asia’s equity long/short-dominated hedge fund industry is doing just fine.  This Reuters story on Friday made the case that,

“Even though a fund run by Australia’s Basis Capital became the region’s first major victim of the global credit squeeze, the dearth of Asia-Pacific funds investing in credit markets means it should suffer less than global peers…these types of debt-focused funds were the exception, not the rule, in the $150 billion (75 billion pound) Asia-Pacific hedge fund industry.”

You may recall Alpha Magazine’s ranking of the top Asian-based hedge fund managers (see related posting, ranking). The  story accompanying the ranking also noted the dearth of old-fashioned equity long/short managers in Asia.  In fact, 4 of the top 5 largest funds were of the simple equity long/short variety.  (The HFRX Asian regional indexes were actually up several percent in August).

Reuters also notes this phenomenon in the same article:

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