Hedge fund Segantii Capital Management is winding down. Bloomberg reported last month that it’s already returned a third of its assets under management to investors and that it plans to return the rest by October. Staff are being let go. Some are already turning up elsewhere.
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Speaking off the record, one London hedge fund headhunter says there’s been a “bun fight” over Segantii’s top people, as rival funds rush to poach them. At the same time, though, juniors at the fund fear being left in the cold.
Many of the departures are expected to become apparent in the coming weeks. For the moment, Narvir Sidhu, a Segantii portfolio manager who is thought to trade event driven and merger arbitrage strategies has just joined Balyasny in London. Jack Greenwood, a London macro portfolio manager, is understood to have resigned, and a risk manager in New York has gone to Millennium. The exits follow the disappearance of Varun Nayyar, a Hong Kong portfolio manager who left for Millennium in May.
While exits are occurring, some Segantii staff are staying behind to wind things down. One junior in Hong Kong says the atmosphere in the office is “strange.” – “People still come in at their regular hour not knowing what to work on, although a few people seem to be away – likely for interviews,” he tells us.
A quant at Segantii’s Hong Kong office says people there were given notice in May, meaning that many are expected to leave soon. He’s not optimistic about finding a new job: “Funds aren’t hiring aggressively and there are just a few jobs here and there. The job market in Hong Kong doesn’t have the depth to absorb this abrupt supply of talent.”
He could possibly try Jain Global. Balyasny also appears to be in the market for talent: alongside Sidhu, it’s just hired Goldman Sachs gilt trader George Tyrell in London.
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