Hedge funds may lose big

TORONTO: The US$2.9 trillion hedge-fund industry may lose about a quarter of its assets in the next year as performance slumps, said Tony James, Blackstone Group LP’s billionaire president.

“It’s kind of a day of reckoning that we face here,” James said in an interview with Bloomberg TV at a conference in Toronto. “There will be a shrinkage in the industry and it will be painful. That’s going to be pretty painful for an awful lot of places.”