STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's business news starts with billion-dollar paychecks.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Institutional Investor's Alpha, a publication focusing on hedge funds, releases its annual Rich List today.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: And that list estimates the world's top 25 fund managers who earned a combined $14.4 billion last year - which is down slightly from the year before.</s>DAVID GREENE, HOST: Topping this list is David Tepper, who took home an estimated $2.2 billion in 2012. Now let's put that in perspective. That's more than one hundred times the salary of Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, the highest paid banking CEO.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Now Mr. Tepper's Appaloosa Management earned his clients an average of 30 percent returns in their investments - well above the six percent average of the stock market. Most hedge funds failed to hit that level last year.
Institutional Investor's Alpha, a publication focusing on hedge funds, released its annual "Rich List" Monday. It estimates the world's top 25 fund managers earned a combined $14.14 billion last year. The total is down slightly from the year before.