Juniors quitting Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse for Connecticut hedge fund strategy

Thinking about leaving your banking job after a disappointing bonus? If you're in the U.S. and you work in equities, a new(ish) Greenwich hedge fund is hiring and pulling people from banks.

The hedge fund in question is Aptigon Capital, the new equities strategy started in June last year by Citadel. With offices in New York and Greenwich, Aptigon has already added over 40 employees and aims to add around 80 more by June this year.

Recent recruits from banks include: Michael Cristofi, a junior trader who joined in January from Credit Suisse; Colin Bristow, a senior biotech analyst from BAML who joined last month too; and Vikram Ashoka, a Morgan Stanley associate in healthcare equity research, who joined in December.

While Aptigon isn't averse to hiring equities professionals from banks, its preference appears to be for hiring from hedge funds. Most of its recruits so far have a fund background, including 17 traders and portfolio managers recruited from the Visium Global Fund in July after the parent fund was wound down, and several from Millennium Management.

Aptigon is run by Richard Schimel, the co-founder of Diamondback Capital Management. It aims to run six to eight teams of seven to nine people covering technology, finance, healthcare and energy and so far appears to have focused on staffing its healthcare business. In August it hired David Bonfili, COO of BlackRock's alternative investors group as COO.

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: Greenwich, CT by photobug56 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.