LI hedge fund falls off world's largest list

Renaissance Technologies Corp., the East Setauket-based hedge fund, has been dropped from an industry-standard list of the world's largest because its assets lost half their value in the past three years and fell below a $20 billion cutoff.

Renaissance funds fell 52.2 percent to $15 billion during the three year period ending Dec. 31, the trade publication Pensions & Investments said in a Monday report. The most recent previous P&I listing was in 2007.

The new list "sharply illustrates the ravages the financial crisis wreaked on firms in the past two years," Pensions & Investments said in its report.

Founded in the 1970s by James H. Simons, Renaissance made decisions based on mathematical models. Once chairman of the Stony Brook University mathematics department, he retired from Renaissance in December.

As of this past October, he was considered to be Long Island's richest man, based on a Forbes magazine ranking of the nation's 400 wealthiest individuals. Forbes placed him at No. 41, with $7.4 billion, the only Long Islander to make the list.

Eleven hedge funds remain on the P&I list, topped by J.P. Morgan with $53.5 billion. Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Citadel Investment Group both also missed the $20 billion cutoff and were dropped.