- ‘Business development’ has become a coveted role at hedge funds amid the battle to recruit top prime ministers.
- Citadel BD ace Matthew Giannini joining the Walleye was one of the most significant moves of 2024.
- Hedge funds hired dozens at BD in 2024 – BI tracked the names of more than 40 who joined top firms.
One of the most intriguing hedge fund personnel moves in 2024 came late in the year. It wasn’t a superstar portfolio manager, nor was it another big bank executive migrating to the buy side.
There was someone with almost no media profile: Matthew Giannini, a senior executive in Citadel’s business development unit, whom Walleye Capital hired in October as COO of its long-term equity business.
The move, from the $66 billion industry’s killer whale to a relatively much smaller fish, surprised some industry insiders BI spoke to at the time, underscoring continued demand for the special role of vetting and recruiting professionals. of investments.
Business Insider wrote in May about the evolution of the “business development” role, which has grown into a coveted specialty amid the boom in multi-manager hedge funds. These firms, prized by investors for strong returns unrelated to the stock market, have added $200 billion in assets since 2019. Hiring has followed suit — headcount has since grown 90% at multimanagers compared to just 6% in other hedge funds – provoking a talent war that has been one of the industry’s defining themes and challenges over the past few years.
Although total assets under management by these firms fell in 2024 for the first time in seven years (some investors pulled money amid rising costs coupled with thin returns in 2023), “the war for talent appears to be continuing uninterrupted,” the Goldman Sachs summit. the services team observed in a September report on multi-manager hedge funds. Those roughly 50 firms added 2,400 new employees in the previous 12 months, Goldman found, an increase of 15%.
Employment in multi-manager hedge funds has far outpaced the rest of the industry. Goldman Sachs Core Services
Business development was no exception, with dozens of top hedge fund hires in 2024, according to industry sources, LinkedIn bios and publicly reported moves.
Millennium, the largest multimanager with $72.1 billion in assets under management and more than 6,000 employees, employed at least 10 people in BD in 2024, BI analysis shows. Balyasny, who has spent hundreds of millions hiring prime ministers this year, added at least six new BD executives to facilitate hiring this year, including three managing directors – most recently commodities specialist David O’Connor, who was joined in November by external research firm Maven.
Citadel has also been hiring, adding a handful of people to one of the most respected BD units in the industry. The hedge fund last year became the most profitable of all time, something that founder and CEO Ken Griffin attributes in part to an “unparalleled” ability to “recruit seasoned professionals to Citadel” and “tremendous success attracting graduates of talent from major colleges and universities.” Surprisingly, Griffin’s talent whisperers are in high demand.
Perhaps no one has more gravitas than Giannini. Some industry professionals who know him say he is tall, charismatic, intelligent and adept at winning PMs — someone who offers a real edge in an industry desperate for him. When Giannini left Balyasny in 2018 to rejoin Citadel, it contributed to a fight between funds.
“Matt is, if not the best, one of the best approachrs I’ve ever met,” one BD professional told BI earlier this year.
Leaving Citadel for Walleye might raise some eyebrows, but joining Walleye offers a potentially lucrative advantage for Giannini compared to a typical BD role. The heads of business groups at these funds typically take home a cut of their unit profits, and while Walleye struggled in 2023, it has conducted a review in the past year that is paying off. The fund is up 15.4% through November, putting it at the top of its group for 2024.
He also joins some familiar faces at Walleye, including Thomas DeAngelis, company president and another former Citadel BD leader, and Anil Gondi, a longtime PM who joined from Balyasny this summer and will oversee the stock split with Giannini. The pair overlapped in Balyasny in the 2010s.
The hiring of Giannini and dozens of others at major funds in 2024 signals that the voracious demand for investment talent, and those talented at recruiting it, isn’t likely to fade anytime soon.
“A clear theme from our conversations with multimanagers was that the ‘war for talent’ synonymous with this segment has not seen any material de-escalation in the last year,” Goldman Sachs said in its report.
Business Insider tracked the business development professionals who joined major funds in 2024, according to industry sources, LinkedIn bios and publicly reported moves. This list is not exhaustive and we may update it as we learn more.