the hedge fund The industry has undergone a transformation in the past five years Multi-strategy funds They come to dominate a landscape once occupied by the lonely Mavericks. As the multiple layers have added assets under management, so has the number of employees. Excluding clerical staff, a handful of top funders now employ more than 12,000 people.
As the chart below shows, Millennium Management is by far the largest multi-strategy company when it comes to staffing. Regulatory filings from last week show that Millennium employs 4,810 employees in total (excluding clerical staff), of whom 2,400 work in investment advisory and researchers. This compares to just 2,823 in the Citadel or a mere 615 in Exoduspoint.
The small number of investment advisory staff at the top of multi-strategy funds reflects the difficulty of leaving an investment bank for a major fund. – Although it is not uncommon for senior bank traders to make this move, it is not easy either. Funds will only hire a small percentage of the people they interview, says Dan James, managing partner at hedge fund staffing firm Monroe Partners. “It’s a very competitive space and not everyone’s strategy will fit in a multi-strategy environment.”
Recent regulatory filings also reflect the funds’ hiring priorities, as well as the potential risks of joining smaller firms “horns” Which may or may not survive stringent loss-limiting measures. As the chart below shows, Citadel cut 132 investment employees last year, though it added a total of 193 employees (excluding administrative staff). People in the latter category are likely to include technology and infrastructure employees. Investment staff has been cut though making Citadel $16 billion in profits in 2024; It is unlikely that 2023 will be very kind.
The charts below, also taken from regulatory filings, show the main difference between Citadel and Millennium. Millennium has far more offices than Citadel (although many of these offices are clusters of employees in outposts), but Citadel offices tend to be larger and more densely populated.
The organizational data only shows the number of employees in the larger offices each company operates and does not show the number of people at Citadel and Millennium in their main offices in Miami and New York, respectively. Notably, Citadel’s London office is its largest outside the US, and it has been growing; The Citadel office in Paris is small by comparison.
Comparative fund filings for 2024 and 2023 also highlight just how far offices come and go. Six bureaus dropped off the Millennium list last year, while another six joined. Citadel has apparently closed its offices in Edinburgh, Stockholm and Minneapolis, but has opened some new offices in Canada and moved to a new building on Park Avenue in New York City.
With most hedge funds having their worst year in 2023 compared to 2024, multi-strategy funds are likely to have fewer headcounts this year. However, headhunter Russell Clark at Figtree Partners says many will simply shift recruiting to more successful strategies. James says there is a tendency for all funds to hire into existing teams rather than add new ones: “A lot of the big funds are interested in adding younger talent in the form of sub-account managers who join existing groups.”
Do you have a secret story, tip or comment you’d like to share? Contact: [email protected] in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available (Telegram:SarahButcher)
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all of our comments are moderated by humans. Sometimes these humans may be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to show up. Ultimately you will – unless it’s offensive or defamatory (in which case you wouldn’t.