Everything's on sale in the current market, and as high-profile bankers are defecting from their posts, hedge fund Citadel Investment Group LLC has been taking advantage for months, especially from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Citadel's banking on the economic cycle to return things to business-as-usual. And since March, it has been making a number of appearances in The Daily Deal's
Movers & shakers column with some major hires.
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Tuesday's hiring of two senior staffers from Merrill Lynch & Co. to lead its capital development efforts in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa is the tip of the iceberg for Citadel, which has been building its overseas business over the last six months.
In March, Patrik Edsparr left J.P. Morgan to become CEO for Citadel Europe and head of global fixed income. Also, Citadel hired Kaveh Alamouti from Moore Capital Management as a senior managing director responsible for the new multistrategy macro investment business. A month after that, Merrill Lynch & Co.'s David Noh joined as a senior managing director and head of Asian merchant banking, based in Hong Kong. Noh was head of corporate principal investments for the Pacific Rim at Merrill. On Noh's heels was Nick Taylor, who came in as a senior managing director and head of principal investments for Asia and Europe. Taylor previously worked for Credit Suisse Group, where he co-founded and led an internal hedge fund, Modal Capital Partners.
Of course, there are plenty of veteran U.S. bankers looking for work, too. In April, Citadel tapped Derek Kaufman as a senior managing director and head of its U.S. fixed-income business. Kaufman worked at J.P. Morgan, where he was global head of fixed income in the proprietary positioning group. Last month, Bill King arrived as a senior managing director and head of securitized products. King was global co-head of securitized products at J.P. Morgan.
After King set up up shop, last week the firm brought in four New Yorkers to beef up its mortgage and securitized products business. Glenn Perillo became head of securitized products research, reporting to Edsparr. Perillo was with BlackRock Inc. for a decade, where he led mortgage research and modeling initiatives. Others on the team include mortgage portfolio managers: Kevin Scherer, who co-founded and was a partner with Midway Group; Brian McDonald, a managing director and senior portfolio manager from -- where else -- J.P. Morgan's ABS principal investment group; and Rajan Dabholkar, who has worked at Proxima Alfa Investments, J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse Group.
On Tuesday, the firm announced Tobias Gehrke and Anita Nassar will join Citadel as co-heads of international distribution and marketing. At Merrill, they were co-heads of government institutional sales. Citadel really is bucking the trend. Nassar was head of central banks and sovereign wealth funds at Merrill, while Gehrke has worked with some top pensions and sovereign wealth funds.
As the Wall Street Journal said, for SWFs and other cash-rich investors from Asia and the Middle East, concerns at home and fear that the worst isn't past are outweighing the urge to hunt for bargains amid the calamity on Wall Street. - Baz Hiralal
See the story on SWFs from the WSJ
See earlier story about Citadel's Merrill hires from Dealscape
