The Eurekahedge Asian Hedge Fund Index, which tracks the performances of regional funds, trailed the global gauge in three of the past five years, even as the Chinese economy grew 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter, trumping the 1.6 percent expansion of the U.S. economy in the period and the 0.9 percent contraction in Europe.

Just 39 percent of Asian hedge funds were able to charge performance fees by being above their historical peak net asset values, known as high-water marks, at the end of 2012, Eurekahedge estimated in a February report.

A number of Asian hedge-fund managers and traders who joined the industry before its 2007 peak have departed. They include Kenrick Leung, who helped manage an Asia fund for London-based Sofaer Capital Inc. before moving to FrontPoint Partners LLC as a Hong Kong-based fund manager.

Going Elsewhere

FrontPoint, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based fund which managed at least $7.5 billion in assets in 2010, shut down in 2012 following investor withdrawals amid probes into insider trading by a U.S. employee who later went to jail. Leung in May joined Paris-based Amundi Asset Management, which manages 727 billion euros ($956 billion), mostly stocks, fixed-income and money-market products for institutions and individuals.

Chris Seabolt, an American trader in Hong Kong for New York-based hedge fund TPG-Axon Capital Management LP, in July joined Fidelity Management & Research Co., which advises the $1.4 trillion family of mutual funds, as its first Asia head trader. Leung and Seabolt declined to comment for this story.

Others are investing privately because of the lack of suitable jobs and difficulty of raising money for new funds, according to 18-year Credit Suisse Group AG veteran Marvin Kelly, a New York City native who left the Swiss bank when it scaled back proprietary trading in 2010.

Attracting Assets

“Launching a fund is tough in this environment because investors seem to prefer large, well-known managers,” said Kelly, 50, who invests his own and his family’s money through Quaternion Capital Management Ltd.

Asian hedge funds may have had a harder time attracting assets because the industry primarily consists of smaller boutiques without the teams and infrastructures to attract capital from large institutions, according to Alex Mearns, Eurekahedge’s Singapore-based chief executive officer.