Bluecrest is hiring portfolio managers again

For a moment, we thought hedge fund Bluecrest Capital Management had stopped expanding – it's shown nine senior ex-banking traders the door so far this year. Now, though, it’s started recruiting again.

Bluecrest is targeting talent from other hedge funds. Nikki Martin and Tom Ayres, both portfolio managers at Ivaldi Capital, signed up to Bluecrest earlier this month.

Both are portfolio managers focused on equity long-short strategies.

Ayres and Martin worked at the same firms for much of their career. Both have previous experience at GAM, Liontrust Asset Management and Aldersgate Asset Management. Both also joined Ivaldi Asset Management at the same time in April 2013.

In the past, Bluecrest took advantage of the exodus of talent from investment banks’ prop trading desks. However, some of the senior traders who joined from banks departed after relatively short tenures.

Bluecrest now appears to be taking a more selective approach to trader hiring. In the past few months it's brought in some very senior traders including Panos Yiasoumi, the former co-head of European government bonds and global rates and currencies at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as well as David Sabotka, the ex head of the bank’s entire fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) division.

Ayres started out at Lehman Brothers in 2001, but took time out to study an MSc in Finance at Imperial College London in 2004 before joining GAM in the same year. Martin spent four years as a chartered accountant at EY before switching across to the buy-side.