UBS Adds to Ranks as it Splits Hedge Funds, But Will Everyone Stay?
Switzerland’s biggest bank recently hired seven people, including four portfolio managers, ahead of splitting its alternative and quantitative investments platform into two separate businesses.
UBS Global Asset Management will operate a multi-manager and hedge fund advisory named the Alternative Investment Solutions group, as well as a single manager hedge fund unit called O'Connor.
The $25.4 billion fund-of-funds unit AIS, which is one of the world’s largest investors in hedge funds according to InvestHedge, will be expanded to include additional entrepreneurial businesses in the alternatives under the leadership of Bill Ferri.
Dawn Fitzpatrick, who previously reported to Ferri, has been promoted to take over the $5.2 billion O’Connor business, which seeks to grow assets under management. She now answers directly to John Fraser, head of the global asset-management division.
O’Connor has hired four portfolio managers and three other people in the past eight weeks, including Nilay Shah, who joined O’Connor’s Chicago office from Ivory Investment Management, and Meraj Sepehrnia, who came onboard in the London office from Carrhae Capital.
All this follows a recent exodus from O’Connor to firms including BlueCrest Capital Management, Millennium Management and Tudor Investment, Bloomberg reports. O’Connor reportedly started slashing 16 of 46 jobs at an equity fund, while hiring traders focused on corporate bonds.
Will more flee, even as UBS bolsters its ranks amid a growth push?
Obscure Threat That Could Cost Banking Jobs (eFinancialCareers)
As global banks are barraged by obscure or rarely used laws that don’t necessarily apply to their alleged crimes, job cuts may be necessary to offset exorbitant litigation costs. A U.S. federal judge this week said the Justice Department can use a savings-and-loan era law in cases against Wall Street titans.
A technical glitch that caused a flood of erroneous options trades won’t cost Goldman Sachs as much as had previously been estimated. U.S. options-exchange officials decided to cancel the majority of the trades, which would have cost Goldman hundreds of millions of dollars.
Tough Road to Hoe for Hedge Funders (eFinancialCareers)
Hedge funds have been trailing the S&P for the better part of a year, that much is obvious. But the degree to which hedge funds have struggled hasn’t been fully documented, until now.
Trading resumed on the Nasdaq exchange on Thursday following a nearly three-hour outage. Still no word yet on the reason for the outage.
A new rule will essentially place a non-compete on SEC employees who are looking to parlay their experience into a job on Wall Street. Come January, all SEC staffers who earn more than $155,440 a year will be banned from contacting old colleagues for one year.
Wells Fargo will cut as many as 2,300 jobs from its mortgage unit to compensate for waning demand for refinancing.
Lazard Capital Markets has hired Peter Santry as its new global head of fixed-income trading. Santry was previously the head of distressed trading at Jefferies.
As has been reported, the SEC is investigating whether J.P. Morgan hired the children of Chinese officials in an attempt to win business in Asia. They should be looking at other banks too. It’s a long-running practice.
Buzz Around the Office
Time to Pick a New Line of Work (NBC)
American Airlines was forced to fire flight attendant trainee Patrick Cau after discovering that he was on the no-fly list. They must have missed the part where he allegedly called in eight bomb threats to his former employer, United Airlines.
List of the Day: Resume Omissions
When creating a resume, sometimes less is more. Scrap these three things from your resume today.
- Achievements that aren’t actually achievements.
- Overly personal information.
- Irrelevant work experiences.
