Millennium Management has raided big investment banks for end of year hiring spree

While most people are waiting until their bonus lands before even thinking about moving jobs, a handful of traders and strategists have been leaving big banks to switch to the buy-side. Millennium Management, the $35.3bn hedge fund run by Izzy Englander, is indulging in some last minute recruitment before Christmas.

Simon Statman, a former gas trader at J.P. Morgan who moved across to Citigroup in December last year, joined Millennium earlier this month, as did Josh O'Byrne, a Citi FX strategist who joined the hedge fund in a similar role. Meanwhile, Alexander Soreff, a former emerging markets interest rates trader at Unicredit who has spent the past three years as a portfolio manager at the Second Swedish National Pension Fund in Gothenburg, also joined Millennium earlier in November.  Michael Abittan, a former Credit Suisse and Brevan Howard trader who was latterly at Balyasny Asset Management, also joined late last month.

Millennium also brought in Kevin Connell, the former had of high yield syndicate at Royal Bank of Scotland as an analyst within European credit in October, Craig Loftus, who joined in late September after more than 12 years working in equity syndicate at Goldman Sachs and Maria Jaworska, who was latterly a fixed income research associate at UBS.

In 2016, headcount was 208 people in its UK office, according to accounts released in July this year, up from 198 in 2015. Millennium has consistently been building its London office for the past two years, but so far in 2017 there have been more senior exits than new hires.

Arnaud Langlois, a former partner and trader at Millennium, launched his own hedge fund – Terreneuve Capital – in July. Andrew Dodson, an oil trader and partner at Millennium, also left in July, while Charaf Tahiri, a former director at Citigroup who joined Millennium in 2014, left in August.

More recently, Oliver Haslam, a former partner at Edoma Partners - the defunct hedge fund set up Pierre-Henri Flamand, the former co-head of Goldman Sachs' principal strategies group who is now at Man Group - has left Millennium after more than four years at the firm.

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