Point72 raids Citi and Goldman Sachs for its latest junior recruits

Point72 Asset Management might be bringing in junior talent through its Academy, but it’s still targeting investment banks’ analysts and associates.

In fact, Steve Cohen’s family office has managed to sway a Goldman Sachs analyst across to its ranks after just nine months of investment banking experience. Lexie Brackenridge, who joined the banks’ investment banking graduate programme in July last year, has just joined Point72 as an associate analyst in New York.

Meanwhile, Alexander Kostyra, who was an associate in Citigroup’s M&A healthcare team in New York, has also joined Point72 as an analyst.

Despite the highly-contested Academy scheme, which typically hires less than 1% of applicants, the investment banking divisions of big banks have been Point72's most lucrative hunting grounds for junior talent. It doesn't go for just any old IBD analysts. In February, it hired Kim Chatall, who was formerly an associate in Morgan Stanley’s IBD team. Chatall also had experience working as a quant and model developer for a hedge fund. Brackenridge’s experience also isn’t typical for an IBD analyst. She worked as a political intern on the 2012 Mitt Romney presidential campaign, as well as a research analyst in the economics department at Columbia University.

Kostyra has worked at Citi for nearly three years, but started out on the EMEA M&A team in London before moving to New York in July last year. Jack Ingles, who was an associate in FIG M&A at Goldman Sachs in London, also joined as a long/short equity analyst in October along with Lisa Jordan, a former analyst on HSBC’s macro trading team.

Point72 is increasingly relying on quantitative approaches to support its traditional discretionary investment approach. Now, all new analysts are required to undergo some training in basic data science and programming.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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