The hedge fund career path used to be paved in gold: make an absurd sum on a bank prop desk, then strike out on your own with a few hundred million dollars in your knapsack, leveraged up five or six times by a kindly investment bank. The fairytale is over for the next generation of hedgies. Conditions for launch are gradually improving; some institutions say they're looking to put cash hoards to work after months of heavy withdrawals, while this week Noam Gottesman of GLG Partners, the listed London group, talked up an “opportunity-rich environment”. But as bankers sound out investors, they had better be prepared to give a lot of ground.