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24 May 2007

HFR Launches Hedge Fund Report In Arabic

Chicago-based HFR Group L.L.C. today announced in a press release the publication in Arabic for the first time of its benchmark Quarterly industry report on the performance and size of the global hedge fund industry. HFR has long had a strong base of subscriber to the report in the Middle Eastern region but to date, the report has only been available in an English language version.

Publication of the classic industry report in Arabic reflects the surge in interest amongst Middle Eastern investors in hedge fund strategies and investment opportunities. The amount of potential Middle Eastern capital, both private wealth and institutional funds, available for investing has been estimated at $4.1 Trillion, making the Arab world one of the most valuable sources of investment capital available in the world today. Hedge funds themselves have also enjoyed notable success in the Middle East region with the HFR Emerging Markets Index (which covers the Middle East, Asia and Latin America) rising by 19.5% in 2006 and an average of 16.4% since the index was first constituted in 1990.

Ken Heinz, President of HFR, said: "The Middle East is an incredibly interesting and fertile region of the world for the hedge fund investing, both as a source of potential capital and a focus of investment for emerging market strategy managers. The Emerging Market strategy has been one of the strongest performing over recent years and continues to deliver above average returns coupled with modest volatility. Providing our industry report in Arabic is a natural next step for HFR and underpins the importance of this region to the global hedge fund community."

The hedge fund industry saw record inflows of more than $60 billion during the first quarter of 2007, bringing total assets under management to $1.568 trillion, according to data released today by Hedge Fund Research (HFR), the leading source of hedge fund information and performance data. These new inflows represented an almost 300 percent gain over 4Q 2006, when the industry recorded $15.7 billion in new fund flows, and was equal to nearly half the record $126 billion in new assets gathered by hedge funds in all of last year.

HFR data is based on the more than 11,000 funds tracked historically by the firm which includes the over 6,500 funds reporting to the company as part of the HFR Database subscription product.

Chicago-based HFR Group L.L.C., founded in 1993, is a global leader in hedge fund data, research, indexation and asset management.

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