Take a bow George Soros, Trafalgar Capital, King Street, Credit Agricole and a host of others.

Those lovely people at Lipper (wholly-owned by Thomson Reuters, I should note) have handed out the gongs for the top hedge funds in 2009. The awards pick out the managers delivering the best consistent returns over three years among participants the Lipper TASS database, divvying up the goodwill between strategies and regions to give a global snapshot of the leading performers.

Soros Fund Management is picked for best offshore multi-strategy fund while King Street gets the prize for best North American event-driven fund. Credit Agricole’s CAAM Invest VaR 20 I EUR fund wins for Global Macro in Europe.

There are too many winners to list here, so click the link above to look at the definitive guide. Worth noting though that B & P Asset Management (Bermuda) looks like the only firm to grab two accolades, for fixed income arbitrage and multi-strategy funds of funds in Europe.

As we’re measuring consistent returns here, it strikes me as shame that the kind of curiously steady performance of the sort posted by Bernie Madoff and K1 has started to look like a new red flag for potential investors.