The top 20 best-performing hedge fund managers of all time made $59.3bn for their investors last year, their biggest annual gains in at least a decade, as hedge funds took advantage of a strong tailwind in stock and bond markets.

These managers, led by Christopher Hohn’s TCI and Steve Mandel’s Lone Pine, made about one-third of the $178bn of total gains bagged by the hedge fund industry in 2019, according to research by LCH Investments. LCH is a fund of hedge funds run by the Edmond de Rothschild group, which tracks the dollar gains made by managers.

While the gains are large in dollar terms, hedge funds have lagged behind equities in recent years. For example last year while funds recorded their best performance in a decade, with gains of 10.4 per cent on average, according to data group HFR, that was still well behind the S&P 500’s 31.5 per cent return.