This hedge fund has indulged in an end of year hiring spree from investment banks

Caxton Associates, the New York-based hedge fund with around $8bn in assets under management, has been indulging in some last minute 2016 hiring from large investment banks in London.

In the past few weeks, it's brought in senior staff from the likes of Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and UBS, and has ended the year with more employees than it started with - a rarity among hedge funds in 2016. It now has 52 regulated employees, up from 46 at the end of 2015.

Caxton has just hired Tanya Laing, who was latterly an executive director at Morgan Stanley, for its global macro fund. Laing was an emerging markets spot FX trader at Morgan Stanley and left in March, but she re-emerged at Caxton in late November. She has also worked for Barclays and Deutsche Bank as a director in their spot FX trading business.

Tom Frost, who was a managing director and head of UK insurance and pensions at Credit Suisse, also joined Caxton in November as head of business development for Europe and Asia. He had worked at Credit Suisse since 2008.

Dino Spinelli, who was an executive director at UBS in Singapore, also joined the hedge fund earlier this month, according to regulatory filings.

Caxton has not been immune to the problems affecting hedge funds, and slashed fees on its Global fund in response to demand from investors across the sector for better value for money.

But the latest accounts for its London operation - for the year to 31 December 2015 - suggest that it has been doing well. Profits surged from £6.2m ($7.6m) in 2014 to £15.2m in 2015. Our research shows that it's the best-paying UK hedge fund over that period - handing its UK-based employees an average of $1.1m in 2015.

While other hedge funds pull back from lateral hiring in favour of graduate programmes and training their existing employees, Caxton has continued to hire from investment banks throughout 2016. Neshma Shah, a former interest rates trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, joined Caxton Associates as a trader on its global macro fund in July. As did Kaifeng Chen, a former rates algo and quants strat at Goldman Sachs, who joined as a quantitative researcher.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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