Hedge fund hires PM who spent his youth competing in maths competitions

It may be a whole new year, but Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint is still behaving like it’s 2018.

After recruiting at least 30 people on both sides of the Atlantic in 2018, the hedge fund has added another two portfolio managers this year.

Nick Firoozye joined to run a systematic fixed income strategy focused on rates. Boyan Petrov joined to run a long/short equities strategy focused on global consumer stocks.

Both men came to ExodusPoint via rival hedge funds, but began their careers in banking. Firoozye was latterly seen at Nomura, where he spent four years as head of global derivatives strategy and three years as a desk strategist. Petrov’s banking career was more attenuated and amounted to a brief flash on UBS’s fixed income desk shortly after he graduated.

Since leaving Nomura in 2017, Firoozye has been working for Symmetry Investments, a Hong-Kong based fund with a London office, where ran a quant strategy and says he was, “Singularly devoted to discrediting astrology and other pseudo science.”

Petrov spent the past three and a half years at Man GLG after initially quitting UBS to work for Rocket Internet as head of affiliates and marketing business development – a career change that lasted approximately 18 months before he returned to the fold at Man. 

Students aspiring to a career in hedge funds may want to use Petrov as their role model. A Bulgarian by birth, he got a first class degree in maths and business studies from the UK's University of Warwick and says he spent his, "high school years focusing on mathematics and competing on various local, national and international olympiads."

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