From hedge fund to academia, and other moves of ex-SAC employees

Steve Cohen is walking around SAC Capital Advisors’ offices trying to persuade his traders, portfolio managers and analysts that it’s business-as-usual and that they really have no reason to fire off their CVs to potential new employers.

It doesn’t seem to be working – most, according to Bloomberg, are simply waiting for their bonus to hit their bank account next year before seeking pastures new.

BlueCrest Asset Management, Citadel and Balyasny Asset Management (which we’ve already highlighted as an expanding hedge fund) are all open to hiring SAC staff. Other employees, like portfolio manager Jos Shaver, are going it alone - he’s raised around $90m for Electron Capital Partners, and hired former SAC traders Neil Choi, Peter Suozzo, Ran Zhou and Jeff Zheng to help run it.

For a hedge fund, SAC employs huge numbers of staff – 1,000 people globally, of which 400 are in the front office and around 115 are portfolio managers. Its London office, by comparison, is tiny with just 43 people working in regulated positions currently, who perhaps unfairly would be tarred by the same brush by federal prosecutors who described SAC as a “magnet of market cheaters”.

So far, there hasn’t been a flood of people leaving SAC’s City office, but it’s perhaps reassuring for those sticking around to note that those that are leaving have secured new jobs. The highest profile departure is Andres Anker, a portfolio manager within SAC’s global macro team who had been with the firm since 2004 after joining from Goldman Sachs. In June, he signed up to Millennium Capital Partners, which could be viewed as going from the frying pan into the fire.

Mine Demirdogen, an analyst at SAC Global Investors, left in June and has now secured a role at Lansdowne Partners, the long-standing $13.4bn hedge fund that recently appointed Alex Snow as its new CEO.

Less glamorously, Fabian Garavito, who joined SAC as an economist from J.P. Morgan, where he was a hedge fund analyst, in July last year, has now left for London School of Economics. He’s a Finance PhD student and teaching assistant in the financial services department.

SAC has also actually been adding in London – six people have joined this year, while Faycal Abbes relocated to the City from Hong Kong.