Citi is looking to name a new Head of Forward Trading based at its European headquarters in London, a job vacancy posted on LinkedIn shows. The search follows the departure of Ali Omari, who was EMEA Head of Delta One Forwards and Sectors, one of the Delta One units, according to Omari and two sources familiar with the matter. Citi's broader Delta One operations have been linked to a trading blunder that led to a market flash crash on May 2. But Omari was not involved in the event and his departure was unrelated, according to Omari and the two sources.Omari told Reuters on Tuesday that he was not at work for three weeks prior to the May 2 flash crash, and only returned to the office on May 3 to tender his resignation from the bank before taking up another opportunity. Citi has previously confirmed that one of its employees was behind the error that led to the market fall, but has not given details on which teams played a role.
Barclays has hired a senior strat from Goldman Sachs to head up its quantitative trading unit, the latest recruit at the UK lender as it builds out its equities business. Aytac Ilhan has joined as head of quantitative investment strategies, a role that will hand her responsibility for automating trading projects within its corporate and investment bank. She started on 11 May and reports to Ashish Prabhudesai, Barclays’ global head of equity derivatives. Ilhan was a managing director at Goldman Sachs and head of its systematic trading strategies desk as well as leading equity derivative strategists in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Publicly traded Brookfield Asset Management plans to set up its asset management business as a separate enterprise and distribute a 25% interest worth an estimated $20 billion to shareholders later this year. The step will create a separately listed, pure-play investment firm with an estimated market value of about $80 billion. The distribution by Brookfield will be valued at about $12 a share and will be tax-free for U.S. and Canadian investors. Brookfield plans to retain a 75% interest in the asset management business at first, treating it as a $60 billion investment, and to continue investing its own cash through the manager’s funds. The unit will have dual Canadian and U.S. stock listings. CFO Nick Goodman said the firm used a multiple of the unit’s annualized fee-related earnings of about $1.9 billion and its roughly $2 billion of annualized carried interest to establish its $80 billion market value. Brookfield ended March with about $720.16 billion of assets under management.
According to a new report from FT, Tiger Global has seen losses of about $17 billion during this year’s tech stock sell-off. The question is whether that trouncing will impact the firm’s venture business, which — like that of many other venture businesses — has ballooned rapidly in recent years. In 2020, the firm closed its twelfth venture fund with $3.75 billion in capital commitments. Early last year, it closed its thirteenth venture fund with $6.65 billion before closing its newest fund, fund XV, with a massive $12.7 billion in capital commitments in March of this year. Yet even that new fund — which reportedly took less than six months to raise and includes $1.5 billion in commitments from Tiger Global’s own employees — is almost fully invested already, according to a source close to the firm. On the one hand, it’s not entirely astonishing to anyone paying attention that Tiger Global has put so much money to work already. It added 118 unicorn companies to its list of portfolio companies last year, according to Crunchbase News, and it continued to outpace every other investor in the first quarter of this year. The question begged, naturally, is how much money Tiger Global can collect for its next fund — and by when. In all likelihood, the firm has soft commitments in place already based on its recent performance. According to a letter to investors obtained by TechCrunch, the firm’s private portfolio funds — as of the end of the first quarter — had generated a 25% net IRR since inception in 2003.
High-profile activist investor Elliott Management is shutting up shop in Asia, according to reports, as the hedge fund's London office prepares to take more control of its investments in the region. Having shut its Hong Kong office last year and moved staff to Japan and the UK, the decision to axe its Tokyo base as well means Elliott's final outpost in Asia will close, and London will lead all of its new and existing campaigns. Citing sources familiar with the matter, both the FT and The Times report that the Tokyo closure does not signal a move to pull investments from the region, and was made in the wake of Hirofumi Nakato's decision to retire from the firm, which he has been at for 15 years.
Lighthouse Investment Partners is hiring macro traders, joining multi-manager firms adding talent to the high-flying strategy. Mission Crest Capital Management, its macro unit, expects to end the year with 15 managers after starting 2022 with 10. The fund is also seeking to double assets to $1 billion within 12 months. Mission Crest hires include: Michael Waresh, who will trade developed and emerging market currencies; Brian Quartarolo, who’s trading Asian fixed-income and currencies; Danny Roobaert, who starts in June, will use machine learning to trade futures in developed markets across commodity, equity index, fixed-income and currencies.
