Ernst & Young (E&Y) recently released the 2011 edition of its annual hedge fund survey entitled, “Coming of Age: Global Hedge Fund Survey 2011” (Report).  The Report conveys and compares the views of hedge fund managers and investors on topics including succession, independent board oversight, use of administrators, expense pass-throughs and due diligence.  This article summarizes the more salient findings from the Report.  One of the Report’s many interesting insights is that managers frequently receive little in the way of feedback when a potential investor declines an investment.  The Report partially fills this “feedback gap” by offering generalized insight on what matters most to investors.  For example, managers may be surprised to learn that the absence of a robust and reliable succession plan may have played as much or more of a role in a lost investment as performance or even operational issues.  (The HFLR will be covering succession planning for hedge fund managers in an upcoming issue.)  More generally, the depth of the disparity in perception between managers and investors on a range of topics, as found by the Report, is at times startling.  The Report therefore offers a sobering reality check for both managers and investors.  Both sides need one another, albeit for different reasons, and the lifecycle of an investment can be significantly more productive if expectations and assumptions are better aligned.