The most fascinating hedge fund hire of 2024 wasn't a star trader or C-suite executive

A man in a suit in front of traders
As the hedge fund talent war continues unabated, demand for the business development professionals who recruit traders has intensified. Top firms hired dozens in BD in 2024.
  • 'Business development' has become a coveted role at hedge funds amid the war to recruit top PMs.
  • Citadel BD ace Matthew Giannini joining Walleye was one of the most noteworthy moves of 2024.
  • Hedge funds hired dozens in BD in 2024 — BI tracked the names of more than 40 who joined top firms.

One of the most intriguing hedge-fund personnel moves in 2024 came late in the year. It wasn't a superstar portfolio manager nor another big bank executive migrating to the buy side.

It was someone with barely any media profile at all: Matthew Giannini, a senior leader in Citadel's business development unit, whom Walleye Capital hired in October as COO of its long-short equities business.

The move, from the industry's $66 billion killer whale to a comparatively much smaller fish, surprised several industry insiders BI spoke with at the time, underscoring the continued demand for the niche role of vetting and wooing investment professionals.

Business Insider wrote in May about the evolution of the "business development" role, which has grown into a coveted specialty amid the boom in multimanager hedge funds. These firms, prized by investors for robust returns uncorrelated with the stock market, have added $200 billion in assets since 2019. Hiring has followed suit — headcount since then soared 90% at multimanagers compared with just 6% at other hedge funds — provoking a talent war that has been one of the industry's defining themes and challenges over the past few years.

Even though total assets managed by these firms declined in 2024 for the first time in seven years (some investors pulled money amid growing costs paired with lackluster returns in 2023), "the war for talent appears to be continuing unabated," Goldman Sachs' prime services team observed in a September report on multimanager hedge funds. These roughly 50 firms added 2,400 new employees in the previous 12 months, Goldman found, a 15% increase.

Chart from Goldman Sachs prime services on multimanager headcount growth
Hiring at multimanager hedge funds has far outpaced the rest of the industry.

Business development was no exception, with dozens of hires by top hedge funds 2024, according to industry sources, LinkedIn bios, and publicly reported moves.

Millennium, the largest multimanager with $72.1 billion in assets under management and more than 6,000 employees, hired at least 10 people in BD in 2024, BI's analysis shows. Balyasny, which has spent hundreds of millions hiring PMs this year, added at least six new BD executives to facilitate hiring this year, including three managing directors — most recently commodities specialist David O'Connor, who joined in November from external search firm Maven.

Citadel has been hiring as well, adding a handful of people to one of the most revered BD units in the industry. The hedge fund last year became the most profitable of all time, something founder and CEO Ken Griffin attributes in part to an "unparalleled" ability to "recruit experienced professionals to Citadel" and "tremendous success attracting gifted graduates from the premier colleges and universities." Unsurprisingly, Griffin's talent whisperers are highly sought after.

Perhaps none has more gravitas than Giannini. Several industry professionals who know him say he's tall, charismatic, intelligent, and deft at winning over PMs — someone who provides an actual edge in an industry desperate for it. When Giannini left Balyasny in 2018 to rejoin Citadel, it contributed to a turf war between the funds.

"Matt is, if not the best, one of the best closers I've ever met," a BD professional told BI earlier this year.

Leaving Citadel for Walleye may raise some eyebrows, but joining Walleye offers a potentially lucrative upside for Giannini compared with a typical BD role. Business group heads at these funds usually take home a cut of their unit's profits, and while Walleye struggled in 2023 it has been executing an overhaul the past year that's bearing fruit. The fund is up 15.4% through November, putting it near the top of its peer group for 2024.

He also joins some familiar faces at Walleye, including Thomas DeAngelis, company president and another ex-Citadel BD leader, and Anil Gondi, a long-time PM who joined from Balyasny this summer and will oversee the long-short equities division with Giannini. The pair overlapped at Balyasny in the 2010s.

Giannini's hiring and the dozens of others at top funds in 2024 signals that the burning demand for investment talent, and those gifted in recruiting it, won't likely dim any time soon.

"One clear theme from our conversations with multimanagers was that the 'war for talent' synonymous with this segment has not seen any material de-escalation in the last year," Goldman Sachs said in its report.

Business Insider has tracked business development professionals who joined top funds in 2024, according to industry sources, LinkedIn bios, and publicly reported moves. This list isn't exhaustive, and we may update it as we learn more.

Firm Name of hire Previous firm
Balyasny Nicole Amen DRW
Balyasny Daniel Anzalone BlueCrest
Balyasny Harry Case Verition
Balyasny David Matz Smith Hanley
Balyasny David O'Connor Maven Search
Balyasny Kelly Suter IMC
BlueCrest Josh Beals Chi-Rho Financial
Capstone Investment Advisors Grace Guo Goldman Sachs
Capstone Investment Advisors Brian Hopkins Hudson Bay
Citadel Trystan Davies-Tommason The Omerta Group
Citadel Donata Leonova Millennium
Citadel Olivia Rees Goldsmith & Co
Citadel Hannah Rosenthal Google
Citadel Michelle Tsang Two Sigma
Eisler Ruvhen Chinaire The Omerta Group
Eisler Chris Harnett Citadel
Freestone Grove Christopher Aldaco D.E. Shaw
Freestone Grove Brittany Lynch Schonfeld
Graham Capital Danielle Greenburg Maven Investment Partners
Hudson Bay Chris Padfield Citadel
LMR Partners Melissa Bosem Millennium
Millennium Maureen Chang Point72
Millennium Derek Chiang Selby Jennings
Millennium Sarka Dilingerova Execuzen
Millennium Katie Gordon Cybernetic Search
Millennium Brian Kimmel Citadel
Millennium Lauren Kraus Garda Capital
Millennium Terence Lee Blackstone
Millennium Steven Rosen Morgan Stanley Investment Management
Millennium Natalia Skrzeczkowska Dartmouth Partners
Millennium Stella Xuan Tenere Capital
Paloma Kristin Cohen Walleye
Point72 Joe Beach Aksia
Point72 Lauren Croucher Dartmouth Partners
Point72 Nicole Deng UBS
Qube Research & Technologies Caroline Kadhim Brevan Howard
Taula Capital Robert Featherstone Citadel
Verition Adam Donaldson Marble Bar Asset Management
Verition Stephanie Melendez Schonfeld
Walleye Capital Carling DiGiacomo Citadel
Walleye Capital Matthew Giannini Citadel
Walleye Capital Jen Pascal Neuberger Berman
Walleye Capital Maureen Reed Goldman Sachs
Read the original article on Business Insider


Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/pGDmfQX
The most fascinating hedge fund hire of 2024 wasn't a star trader or C-suite executive The most fascinating hedge fund hire of 2024 wasn't a star trader or C-suite executive Reviewed by mimisabreena on Wednesday, December 25, 2024 Rating: 5

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