Alpha magazine honored Morgan Stanley Prime Brokerage as the top provider of risk-management solutions to hedge funds for 2007. The Firm climbed to the top spot from fourth in 2006. The results appear in the November 2007 issue.

Earlier in the year, the Firm was recognized as the industry's top prime broker overall

"Having a strong risk management system and knowing how to best interpret it can play a major role in a fund's performance — a fact that was highlighted during the summer's market turbulence," the editors wrote.

Alpha described the Morgan Stanley solution as having "exceptionally broad reach and is able to capture and assess just about any type of investment position, while providing enough flexibility to adjust to individual client needs."

Another key contributor to the Firm's jump in rank, according to Executive Director Nicholas Zinn, Head of Prime Brokerage Risk Technology, was Prime Brokerage's ability to integrate different analytics from vendor software, trading-desk systems and proprietary technology into a comprehensive risk-management solution. Multiple technology teams outside of Prime Brokerage, from credit derivatives to equity derivatives, provide key product analytics without compromising any client activity.

Other differentiators included the flexibility and user-friendliness of the Firm's system, as well as the ease with which clients could customize parts of the online system quickly to meet their specific needs.

Alpha polled nearly 300 hedge funds, which manage more than US$600bn in assets. Funds were asked to rate the quality of the software they used and the service they received for the 12 months ending March 31, 2007.