Discretionary hedge funds are reeling from poor performance, pressure to cut fees and the rising tide of quant funds. Most are more likely to be firing than hiring, but Caxton Associates is one of the exceptions.
Caxton Associates has been building its London operations while a lot of rivals scale back. It now has 56 employees registered with the Financial Conduct Authority – up from 47 in February 2016.
The latest recruits at the $8bn New York-based hedge fund’s UK operation are GJ Prasad and James ter Haar, who both joined as portfolio managers from Millennium Capital Partners earlier this month.
Ter Haar has rejoined Caxton after six years working for various other hedge funds including JTH Capital Management, where he was CIO, and Lucius Capital Partners. He’s an associate partner and portfolio manager. He originally joined Caxton as a portfolio manager in April 2009, having previously been head of credit flow trading at now defunct investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort.
Prasad, meanwhile, is a senior analyst and portfolio manager at Caxton, and previously focused on European financials at Millennium. Before this, he worked at J.P. Morgan’s chief investment office as an executive director.
Caxton Associates has been hiring in senior employees over the past few months. It indulged in an end-of-year recruitment spree in December, poaching senior traders from the likes of Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and UBS.
Tom Frost, who was a managing director and head of UK insurance and pensions at Credit Suisse, joined Caxton as head of business development for Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, Tanya Laing, an emerging markets spot FX trader at Morgan Stanley, joined Caxton’s global macro fund and UBS executive director Dino Spinelli was also hired.
Christian Deazeley and Anil Kamath, both portfolio managers departing BTG Pactual’s shrinking London operation, also joined Caxton earlier this year.
Caxton Associates, which employs around 190 people globally, has not been immune from the pressures hitting hedge funds. In September, it took the decision to cut its fees after a period of poor performance for the industry.
Caxton has also lost some employees recently. Most significantly, Sushil Wadhwani, one of the UK’s best economists, ended his partnership with the hedge fund late last year. Caxton took a stake, thought to be worth millions of dollars, in his firm Wadhwani Asset Management back in 2011 and Wadhwani became a Caxton partner. However, he ended his employment there in January.
Meanwhile, execution trader Danny Choueiri left Caxton earlier this year and is now working as an emerging markets debt trader at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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