According to a Thursday release by Institutional Investor’s AR: Absolute Return+Alpha, a magazine reporting proceedings in the hedge fund industry, the top hedge fund managers received record-high paychecks in 2009, after the turnaround of the financial markets.

As per the statistics, the 25 best-paid hedge fund managers earned a record $25.3 billion overall last year – topping the 2007 all-time record high of $22.3 billion payouts; and marking a two-fold increase in the payouts the managers received in 2008, when most of the leading hedge funds reported heavy losses due to the financial crisis.

Going by the annual ranking released by AR: Absolute Return+Alpha, the list of the highest-paid managers had David Tepper of Appaloosa Management in the top spot; followed by the Hungary-born investor George Soros in the second spot; and last year’s topmost earner James Simons of Renaissance Technologies in the third place.

While Tepper earned $4 billion in 2009 on investments in the financial sector; Soros earned $3.3 billion; and Simons took home $2.5 billion. Altogether, seven of the world’s leading hedge fund managers earned 10-figure paychecks.

Noting that “hedge funds that survived 2008 were able to capture the gains on the way up in 2009,” Nadia Papagiannis, a hedge fund analyst at Morningstar, elaborated that hedge fund returns showed a notable 19.6 increase in 2009, as compared to a 22 percent loss in 2008.