Quants move from hedge fund in Switzerland to the UK

Movement of financial services professionals in the UK isn’t all one-way traffic after the Brexit vote. Quant hedge fund managers have been moving from Switzerland to London.

OK, so Switzerland isn’t in the EU, of course, but the general perception since the June vote is that fewer people want to come to London. The UK’s appeal may have increased slightly after the U.S. presidential elections, but still…

In the past month quantitative analysts from Bluecrest Capital Management’s Geneva operations have been moving to role in London. Lykomidis Mastroleon, who was part of the systematic trading team at Bluecrest in Switzerland since April 2010, has just moved to London to work for Tudor Investment Corporation.

Meanwhile, Xander Savenberg, who also worked at Bluecrest in Geneva and who previously worked in Belgium, has just joined Citadel in London.

This is hardly a groundswell of moves into London. However, it shows that firms in the UK are having to look further afield for recruits in hot areas of the financial sector like quantitative analysis and that people will move to London for the right opportunity.

Citadel has been gradually building its quant business in London. In June it hired Christian Hesse as a quantitative researcher in London. He joined from Deutsche Bank. It also poached Yiyi Huang, again from Bluecrest, as a quant researcher in New York. 

Tudor, meanwhile, has been making a push into quantitative strategies while also scaling back headcount in other business areas.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com