Hedge funds that launched in 2023, and may hire you
Some big hedge funds are launching this year, and those hedge funds are already hiring. But if you want to work there, it will help to work for a hedge fund already.
That’s what we’ve found, at least, looking at some of this year's big launches.
The biggest hedge fund launched in 2023 has been SurgoCap Partners, with around $1.8bn in assets. Founded by Mala Gaonkar, a 24-year veteran of hedge fund Lone Pine Capital (which makes SurgoCap a Tiger Grand Cub, by the way), the fund seems to hire nearly exclusively from other hedge funds. Head of trading Eric Schoenberg, for instance, came from Darsana Capital Partners; research and operations coordinator Kristina Amato from ExodusPoint; and director of data science and portfolio analytics John Kazuba from Third Point.
Ilex Capital Partners is the second biggest hedge fund launch this year, with of around $1.8bn, per Bloomberg. Its founders – Jonas Diedrich and David Sutton – are both Citadel veterans, as are swathes of its other staff, including CTO Sharat Gangwani, and CRO Fabian Blohm. Interestingly, the fund picked up two people from Pelham Capital, another London hedge fund – William Knight, a treasury manager, and Matthew Reid, an analyst.
Another fund, Astaris (from the Latin root “asto”, to wait) Capital Management, was founded in 2020 by Martin Beck, Robert Pohlhausen, and Bjorn Bischoff. Beck and Pohlhausen were both part of Centerbridge Partners before founding Astaris, whilst Bischoff was a director at Deutsche Bank. Astaris doesn’t seem to be hiring – they haven’t brought in anyone new since 2021 besides an intern.
The scale of hedge fund hiring might pick up significantly in 2024. Millennium co-Chief Investment Officer Bobby Jain is currently assembling something akin to a hedge fund dream team in anticipation of launching his own next year – and has already brought in Jaime Hobbeheydar from Elliott Management to be head of investor relations, and Jonathan Barton from Bank of America to be COO.
Jain himself has told people that he aims to engineer the largest ever hedge fund launch, even eclipsing ExodusPoint’s $8.5bn raised. ExodusPoint founders Michael Gelband and Hyung Lee were both Millennium alumni when they left, too.
What on earth is in the water over there?
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