The comings, and the goings again, at hedge fund Walleye
Walleye, the multistrategy hedge fund with $7.1bn in AUM and a focus on equities sales and trading in all its guises, is having a good year. Returns are circa 13% so far in 2024, according to Bloomberg. However, Walleye is also making repeated rounds of job cuts. And many of those cut appear to have only worked there for a year, or less.
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As we noted yesterday, Walleye's latest cuts include systematic macro and volatility traders, even though systematic macro is an area the fund was said to be focusing on earlier this year. Walleye also made cuts in August and in March.
Walleye's March cuts included Ralph Courtney, the former head of EMEA, who was hired from Marble Bar in November 2023 to build out the London office. More recent cuts in London include Jonathan Gordon who joined from Millennium in June and who was then let go again in October according to the FCA register. Robert Toffel who joined from Verition in January was cut this week. The FCA Register and LinkedIn suggest that portfolio managers like Raghav Subbarao and Alberto Cozzini also came and went relatively quickly in London, although it's unclear whether they left of their own volitions.
Walleye declined to comment upon or verify either the departures or the apparent rapidity in the turnover of some employees. It's not unusual for multistrategy hedge funds to experience a high volume of departures. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that 15%-20% of staff at Millennium leave each year, for example. Individuals typically leave funds due to underperformance or as assets are allocated to different strategies.
LinkedIn profiles suggest Walleye's staff turnover isn't restricted to London, even though recent cuts are understood to have impacted London disproportionately. Benjamin Lu, for example, says he joined in New York in June 2023 and left again in February 2024. Evan Halpern says he came in August 2022 and left in September 2023. Rahul Dhir says he arrived in Dubai in July 2023 and left in February 2024. These dates have not been confirmed by Walleye.
Some of those who've left Walleye in the past year claim that the exits are unrelated to performance and that high performing individuals were let go, sometimes before they'd been given a chance to prove themselves and simply because of changes in strategy. Walleye has always been heavily skewed towards equities trading, and there are suggestions, too, that it's doubling down on this after making multiple hires from Citadel's equities business.
Walleye's array of Citadel hires include Tom D'Angelis, the former head of equities business development at Citadel, who joined in 2023. Subsequent Citadel recruits include Eric Nolette, Citadel's former head of sector data analysts, who joined in New York this month, and Matt Gianni, Citadel's head of business development in New York, who joined in recent weeks. Business development professionals in hedge funds deal with recruitment, so D'Angelis and Nolette's arrivals look like statements of intent.
Not everyone who joins from Citadel lasts long at Walleye, though. Jessica Vanquin, a quant macro PM, spent six years at Citadel before joining Walleye in February 2024. She didn't stay long. - Vanquin, too, was let go this week. We haven't spoken to Vanquin but some of those who've gone suggest that Walleye's staff churn will make it harder for the fund to hire in the future.
Walleye is run by Will England, a former quant researcher at Man Group. England replaced Andrew Carney, who founded Walleye with a focus on market making in 2005, and who retired in August 2024. In a podcast last year, England declared himself a great fan of Ken Griffin at Citadel. England also said that working in portfolio management can be a toxic job. Some of those whose time at Walleye has been cut short might well agree.
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