Citadel has increased its London headcount by 30% in a year

Citadel is on a hiring spree in London. Over course of last year, as other funds cut headcount, Ken Griffin’s $27bn firm increased its UK employee numbers by nearly 30%.

In accounts for its London operation in 2016, released today, Citadel revealed that it has 196 UK-based staff, up from 151 the year before – or a 29.8% increase. It has 110 people working in investment management functions (up from 86 in 2015), and also increased technology and support staff from 65 people in 2015 to 86 last year.

This is no surprise. As we reported variously throughout last year, Citadel was poaching from large investment banks and competitor hedge funds alike and has continued to bring in senior staff throughout 2017 in its London operation.

Most recently, it hired Nicholas Wilson, a senior FX trader at Citigroup, Viswanathan Chandramouli, who was previously a portfolio at Emso Asset Management and Hossam Elsokari, a former SAC Advisers analyst who has been running his own hedge fund HSE Capital Management since 2014. All three joined in late September.

It also brought in Simon Chiavarini, a former UBS trader, and Zhen Yang to build out its London-based equities business in August. Meanwhile, Alan Dunwoodie, an executive director in finance technology at Goldman Sachs, joined as a managing director and head of risk IT late last month.

Despite the hiring drive, Citadel paid its London employees less on average last year. It shelled out £505.6k on an average pay per head basis last year, down from £568.2k in 2015. Meanwhile, its 13 members shared £157.8m, although the highest paid member was Citadel’s European parent company, which received £125.6m. This means the remaining 12 members shared £32.2m, or an average payment of £2.7m.

Citadel made profits of £57m on the back of £155.9m in revenues last year, down from £95.8m in 2015.

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