“Getting money into hedge funds is not an easy task for the moment. Asset raising is difficult, though outflows are within normal parameters,” explained Joachim Gottschalk, Gottex chairman.

“Global uncertainty in financial markets that started in the summer of 2011 did not really abate in the fourth quarter with uncertainty about the euro, global economic recovery, sovereign debt crisis and China’s economy at the forefront,” he continued.

“We expect uncertainty to remain for the remainder of this year, which will impact investor willingness to make allocation decisions. On the other hand, we expect that we will benefit from the meaningful relative outperformance of our market-neutral flagship products.”

The company ended last year flat, while most of their competitors suffered severe losses. In a recent trading update, the firm claimed that this fact would prove helpful once investors return to the industry, as it marks them as a strong company. In the meantime, however, Gottex will be forced to cut its losses and initiate new approaches.

“Asia should be our growth area. With the right people, we would expand our Asia footprint,” Gottschalk said.

The funds will support Signature Center, a new home in the Times Square area, as well as fund the Signature Ticket Initiative: A Generation of Access, that ensures affordable and accessible tickets to all signature productions over the next two decades. The theatre company’s announcement stated that the center will now be called The Pershing Square Signature Center to acknowledge the donation.

“Their commitment to both the company and the Signature Ticket Initiative is inspiring and will provide unprecedented access to all of the exciting cultural activity that will take place in our new home,” said Founding Artistic Director James Houghton.

Ackman said: “We are especially pleased to support their groundbreaking program to provide access to great theatre, which we see as an investment in New York and the theatre community that will pay dividends for generations to come.”

Citigroup recently publicized a 31-page guide for hedge fund start-ups, which lists five key points in getting a fund up and running.

“The Citi Prime Finance Hedge Fund Start-Up Guide is being published at a time we believe represents a new inflection point in the evolution of the industry and the emergence of a new model for managing a hedge fund,” the paper says.

“In our view, the infrastructure and software choices enjoyed by a manager I today’s environment deliver a ‘virtual set’ or services and products that we are describing internally and to our clients as ‘Hedge Fund 3.0’.”

The guide covers structure and control; infrastructure (including real estate, computer system setup, build-out and integration testing); service providers, organization and marketing.

“We have designed out Business Advisory services around a Hedge Fund Maturity Model that identifies how firms change over time as their AUM (assets under management) grows and their global reach expands,” the guide explains. “Just as we helped you navigate the challenges of this start-up phase, we have industry insights, key industry benchmarks, and practical hedge fund templates that will help you remain at the forefront of your peers.”

Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund tracks “Global Macro” trading strategy, which fell 10% last year; more than the entire index. In the meantime, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock Index flatlined.

“A decline of this amount is very rare, and just goes to show how difficult the environment was last year,” said Dutch bank ING’s Chris Turner.

The Index tracks seven strategies. The worst performers in 2011 included global macro funds, though “event-driven” strategies did even more poorly. The best performers were “fixed-income arbitrage,” which fell 1.3%, and “emerging markets” which fell 2.4%.

Despite hardship in the industry, investors have yet to turn away from hedge funds. Pension funds were an especially lucrative source during last year’s third quarter, with inflows into the hedge fund industry reaching $8.7 billion.

“We believe that the pension move into hedge funds, which has been gradually picking up the last four years, continues in 2012,” said Philip Vasan of Credit Suisse Group. He added that hedge funds and their investors still favor “global macro” strategies for 2012.

The Core Hedge Fund Index is a number of indexes based on more than 8,000 hedge funds. Dow Jones & Co., The Wall Street Journal publisher, owns a 10% stake in the index, while CME Group Inc. owns the remaining 90%.

“Mid-sized funds did very well in Asia,” Gordon said. He added that the figures, however, are not one hundred percent accurate because of the success “of a small number of new, larger hedge funds in the region. Overall the number of funds in the medium to large category is definitely growing.”

Though launches in 2011 did not always live up to expectations, Gordon remains optimistic. “We also saw the continuation of the closure of small funds but we believe this remains a positive sign of vibrancy of the Asian hedge fund industry,” he said.

Still, the coming year is likely to be a difficult one for fundraising. He explained, “In Asia the threat of the continued withdrawal of big European banks will create opportunities but if these assets start to be sold in falling markets there could be a knock-on effect in Asia that would pose a danger to the growth we’ve been seeing in the Asian hedge fund industry.”

Gordon continued, stating that good governance is key for attracting money in an industry. “We have been watching the continued growth and success, particularly among mid-sized Asian hedge funds, throughout 2011 with interest. The defining characteristic of these funds has been an intense focus on good governance, especially around counterpart risk.”

“Equity markets started the month with a sell-off, and then went on to rally going into Christmas,” Sol Waksman of BarclayHedge said. “Unfortunately, markets that see-saw can be quite difficult for managers to navigate successfully.

“Dramatic volatility in global equity markets created significant challenge for fund managers throughout 2011, evidenced by the fact that 60 percent of funds reported a loss for the year.

“This lead to an underperformance by hedge funds of 7.39 percent compared to the S&P 500, the worst since the 10.69 percent gap in performance back in 2003.”

The first quarter of 2011 still saw overall gains for hedge funds.

Waksman went on to explain that “although Emerging Markets Index was the poorest performer of the sectors that we track (having lost 13.02%), investors continue to be attracted to the strategy, s evidenced by inflows of $7.6 billion in the past 12 months.”

Ross Seymore, analyst at Deutsche Bank, upgraded the chip sector to overweight this past Monday.

“While fundamentals are likely to remain choppy in early 2012, we expect growth to accelerate as the year progresses,” he said. “After underperforming in 2011, we expect the semi stocks to react positively to this fundamental improvement and therefore outperform the broader market in 2012.”

Netflix was not the only company to hold rising shares. In fact, major chip-making shares climbed dramtically, including Broadcom Corp, Intel Corp, SanDisk Corp and Advanced Micro Devices. Shares of Apple Inc. also reached an all-time high of $427.75. Networking stocks gave those in technology a push as well, including Juniper Networks, who recorded a 5.4% increase, as well as F5 Networks, with 3.5%.

An F5 analyst said “Checks show that the pipeline is solid, which should bode well for March quarter guidance.”

In October, investors pulled $9 billion out of hedge funds, after withdrawing $2.6 billion in September. In November, hedge fund managers saw an increase of $3.6 billion in investments.

“After months of outflows across nearly every hedge fund category, November saw outflows in only two investment styles,” said Sol Waksman of BarclayHedge.

During the outflow months, investors pulled billions from emerging market funds, as well the popular strategy of equity long-short funds. In November, they returned to invest in multi-strategy funds and macro funds.

The industry has been boosted back to a value of $1.71 trillion, but has yet to return to its peak of $2 trillion reached earlier in 2011.

As a subsidiary of Minnesota-based Cargill, Black River Capital’s deal has made the commodities giant the largest privately-owned business in the United States.

Cargill’s primary dealings include trading, purchasing and distributing grain, as well as other agricultural wares. The company produces food ingredients like starch, vegetable oils and fat, manufactures and sells livestock and feed and trades energy, steel and transport.

AgriNurture, a fruit and vegetable producer, wholesaler and exporter, is currently working to increase and expand its business dramatically. It is in the process of establishing a $5 million factory to support its supply of coconut juice to the American Vita Coco, while last year it acquired 51% of the Big Chill fruit shake franchise. Antonio Tiu, the company’s president, revealed their hopes to make the Big Chill an international brand.

Steven Carhart, the portfolio manager and chief investment officer at Trust & Fiduciary Management Securities, is familiar with the strategy. In fact, the firm has been managing a similar one for the past ten years. Now, it is managing a new mutual fund for CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, an accounting firm with $3 billion under management.

Mr. Carhart explained: “We’re taking a holistic view of pass-through securities because we believe we can find something that will produce income in any type of market environment.”

He added, “It’s almost like another asset class or a hedge fund surrogate. It’s extremely safe and extremely transparent, and we’re aiming for high-single-digit income without a lot of volatility.”

According to Mr. Carhart, the strategy has generated yearly revenues of 7-9% in the past.