Mayfair Hedge Funds

Mayfair Hedge Funds on the Decline in London

Perhaps it is a sign of the general hedge fund industry or just those funds in London, but many fund managers in the city are opting for a slightly more modest location. For years, Mayfair (or hedge fund alley, as it is sometimes called) has been home to many of London's hedge fund managers. But now, due to financial circumstances, some funds are moving out of Mayfair.

The trend may also have something to do with the popular perception of hedge funds and how the swanky Mayfair district encouraged that narrative. Whatever the reason, the number of hedge funds and private equity firms in Mayfair and St. James's have fallen by almost 70% over the last five years.

London hedge funds are shunning their traditional heartland in Mayfair, the city's most expensive office neighbourhood, pushed out by straitened financial circumstances and the desire to dump their racy image for something more businesslike.

The Mayfair and St James's district, including the so-called "hedge fund alley" of Curzon Street and Berkeley Square, contains some of London's most expensive shops and restaurants and is a short walk across Hyde Park for numerous fund managers living in upmarket residential areas like Knightsbridge and Chelsea.

A string of funds set up in the area's converted Georgian townhouses between 2005 and 2007, many of them escapees from investment banking jobs in the more traditional financial districts of the City and Canary Wharf further east.

But the Mayfair set are on the wane.

Fifty-one percent of hedge funds and private equity firms in London's wider West End area were located in Mayfair and St James's in the last quarter of 2011, down from 69 percent five years ago, data from property consultancy Cushman and Wakefield shows. Source

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