Alfreido Saitta’s odyssey at Brevan Howard appears to be coming to an end, but the hedge fund is still adding investment talent to other teams.
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Bloomberg reported yesterday that Brevan has shuttered Saitta’s fund after it lost 4.9% in the first quarter following what appears to have been failed bets on falling rates. Saitta is leaving once the fund has been wound down, even though Louis Basger, who ran another Brevan fund and lost 7.8%, is staying.
Prior to joining Brevan Howard in 2011, Saitta was a managing director in rates trading at JPMorgan for five years. Before that, he was a director in short term interest rates trading at Citi.
After long years of rates traders moving from banks to hedge funds, Saitta’s exit from Brevan Howard is a reminder that hedge funds are not an easy option. Traders have now started moving in the opposite direction. Yun Zhou, a former macro portfolio manager at Brevan Howard, for example, recently reappeared as Citi as New York-based MD in rates options trading.
While Brevan Howard has been ejecting underperforming portfolio managers, particularly in systematic macro, and cutting some middle office staff, it’s also hiring. It recently added Leon Haack, a London-based credit analyst from rival hedge fund Balyasny Asset Management.
Brevan Howard has two large key multi-manager funds: the Master fund, a macro fund with approximately $12bn in AUM, and the Alpha Strategies fund with approximately $12.5bn in AUM which is more relative value leaning with limited directional risk.
The fund has hired heavily in recent years, particularly in the Alpha Strategies fund with people added across credit, systematic, emerging markets and commodities.
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