UBS loses another hedge fund trader to Bluecrest

Bluecrest Capital, the expansionary hedge fund, has managed to sway a third portfolio manager from UBS’s hedge fund unit.

Martin Kinsler, a portfolio manager at UBS O’Connor, joined Bluecrest's London office in February, according to filings on the FCA register. He is the third portfolio manager from UBS’s alternative arm to be hired by the hedge fund in the last six months. Rabin Tambyraja, who managed the long-short European equities, utilities, renewables and infrastructure portfolio and Bernard Ahkong, a trader, also left UBS O’Connor for the hedge fund last year.

UBS O’Connor employees have been hit with a double whammy of job cuts and a shake-up of the compensation structure. In June last year, it cut 16 of 46 positions at its equity fund, while also building out its credit fund’s headcount. Most of these cuts were in the U.S., however.

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Meanwhile, according to reports on Bloomberg, it has included some contingent capital bonds in its deferred compensation, which can be written off if UBS’s common equity ratio falls below 7%. This has reportedly caused some consternation in the ranks of UBS O’Connor.

Kinsler is a veteran portfolio manager and has been working at UBS O’Connor since 2010. Before this, he was a portfolio manager at Henderson Global Investors, where he worked from 2007 and prior to this worked at Kames Capital.

BlueCrest has been on a global expansion drive throughout the last year, hiring extensively from investment banks like Nomura, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. It has increased its front office headcount by 43% in the past 12 months and now employs over 250 people.