This hedge fund has slashed pay and headcount as profits slip by 61%

Hedge fund Cheyne Capital Management has cut senior headcount and reduced pay for its partners after a year when profits slipped by 61%.

Cheyne, which has around £8bn in assets under management, reduced the number of senior staff in its UK operation by 14% in the year to 31 March 2016, according to new accounts released on Companies House today.

It’s no surprise that both pay and headcount slipped at Cheyne – profits went from £16.3m in 2015 to £6.5m last year, or a 61% decline. The number of members it employs fell from 51 in 2015 to 44 at the end of March last year.

Cheyne brought its rank and file staff into the LLP this year, and now employs 57 people in the UK outside of the partner level. It paid them an average of £137.5k ($166.4k). This puts it towards the bottom of our UK hedge fund pay ranking. However, overall staff numbers remained the same at around 140, according to people close to the firm.

Within the partnership, the highest paid member received £4.9m ($6m), down from £8.8m in 2015. On a per head basis, average member pay was £148k last year.

Cheyne lost some senior employees throughout last year. Its chief investment officer, Chris Goekjian, retired to manage his own wealth through a new firm called Blue Glen Investment Partners. Its head of equities, John Hyman, also left in July.

More recently, however, Cheyne has been hiring. It took on Frederic Denjoy, a former Brevan Howard partner, in September as a partner and an equities portfolio manager. He was most recently running his own hedge fund, Denjoy Partners, which shut in 2015.

It also brought in Nikos Karadouris, the former head of marketing and business development at Numen Capital, as a portfolio manager and product specialist.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

Photo: Getty Images

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