This article is more than 2 years old.

April 15, 2013 This article is more than 2 years old.

Ever wonder where the real money is? In hedge funds, of course!

Institutional Investors’ latest “Rich List” of highest-earning hedge fund managers shows them raking in eye-popping sums. Ten manager’s earnings—which were defined as “gains on a manager’s own capital held in his funds and in his share of fees”—amounted to $380 million or more per person, just for 2012.

That beat the salaries of the US’s 10 best-paid CEOs—combined. According to the New York Times’ list of highest-paid CEOs, the top 10 together made a total of $380 million. Oracle’s Larry Ellison took home the most money of any US CEO—$96.1 million in compensation. Ironically, Goldman Sachs analyst David Kostin estimated that 88% of hedge funds underperformed the market last year.

Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper, Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio, SAC Capital Advisors’ Steve Cohen, and Renaissance Technologies’ James Simons all saw gains of more than $1 billion each in 2012. The top ten managers saw combined gains of $10.1 billion. Tepper topped the list with $2.2 billion in earned money. All are Americans.

What’s hilarious is that hedge fund managers on the whole made less than they made last year; the top 25 hedge fund managers earned $14.14 billion in 2012 compared to $22 billion in 2011 (paywall).