Reuters- Morningstar Inc., which has already nearly doubled the number of hedge funds it tracks, wants to grow in the hedge fund industry, an executive at the well-known mutual fund rankings firmsaid on Monday.
Chicago-based Morningstar, which developed a star ratings system for mutual funds, currently tracks over 6,000 hedge funds’ telephone numbers, addresses and performance data, up from 3,500 about a year ago, Ryan Tagal, the company’s director of hedge funds said on Monday.
He expects the number of tracked hedge funds to expand as ever more investors add these loosely regulated funds to their portfolios, making the hedge fund tracking business potentially lucrative for companies such as Morningstar and Reuters’ Lipper unit.
“We want to grow that number in the near future,” Tagal said, declining, however, to give specific numbers or target dates when Morningstar’s data base will grow even more.
Morningstar moved into the hedge fund database industry in 2005 and has quickly added names through acquisitions such as its purchase of the Standard & Poor’s fund data business in March.
For $55 million in cash, Morningstar bought access to data of more than 135,000 portfolios, including mutual funds, hedge funds and exchange traded funds.
Tagal said it is taking time to eliminate duplications and weed out funds that might have reported information to both Morningstar and S&P. In a few months, Morningstar expects to have abetter handle on which new funds it will be tracking, Tagal said.
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