Top hedge fund chooses junior banker as it builds its equities team

Millennium Management is bringing in junior bankers as it looks to build its equities team under Peter Santoro, the former global head of equities trading at Morgan Stanley whom it hired in February last year to head its equities business.

The $35.3bn hedge fund, which is run by Izzy Englander, hired Joseph Largman, an investment banking associate at Moelis & Company, as an equities analyst in its London office earlier this month.

An M&A banker by training, Largman started his investment banking career with Citi in 2012 and moved to Moelis & Company as analyst in 2014.

Largman's arrival at Millennium highlights hedge funds' interest in young bankers with sector or country knowledge. A Brazilian by birth, Largman will focus on Latin America at Millennium. Jonathan Jones, head of investment talent development at Point72 Asset Management, recently wrote here that hedge funds can offer better careers than private equity for former banking juniors. - in a PE fund you'll be managing the whole bureaucratic deal process; in a hedge fund, you'll be given more autonomy and will be able to pursue your own investment ideas. "The market itself gives you real-time feedback on the quality of your ideas every day," said Jones.

Largman isn't Millennium's only hire for its equities team this year. In March it recruited Daniel Melum, a former senior research associate for US retail at AB Bernstein, and Alireza Berry-Noubar from BlueCrest Capital Management. Melum joined in March as an equity research analyst for consumers in New York. Berry-Noubar joined as an equities analyst in London. Berry-Noubar began his career in M&A coverage at Morgan Stanley.

Millennium also hired Jonas Hoersch in January 2018, and William Miller a month later, according to the FCA register, as equities analysts in its London office. Prior to joining Millennium, Hoersch was an equities research analyst at Deutsche Bank, where he began his career and worked for two and half years, while Miller, who graduated in Mathematics from the University of Bath in 2015, was previously a research analyst in UK utilities at Lazarus Partnership.

Equities analysts have been looking to escape banking following the introduction of MiFID II. Millennium is clearly hiring. Junior bankers who want to do something different may also want to give the fund a call.

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