(Bloomberg) -- Millennium Management is allocating nearly $3.3 billion to two new teams as Izzy Englander’s hedge fund juggernaut continues to hoover up talent in its push to expand internal and external investments.
Hong Kong-based Robert Tau will receive $1.5 billion for his macro trading firm and manage money exclusively for Millennium, according to people familiar with the matter. Daniel Engel-Hall, a former Marshall Wace money manager, is getting $1.75 billion to trade under Millennium’s Andora Partners brand, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.
A spokeswoman for Millennium and Tau declined to comment. Engel-Hall didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The moves are the latest sign that the $70 billion hedge fund giant has ratcheted up efforts to gather the most sought-after talent and bring them into its orbit. Just last month, it allocated about $1 billion to New York-headquartered Scopia Capital Management and another $800 million to new hires Chris Tuzzo and Warren Empey, who previously traded for Kepos Capital.
In Asia, it recruited Marshall Wace alumnus Ramesh Karthigesu, who will shut his own firm to join Millennium next year, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Tau, for his part, was formerly a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. within macro trading. He went on to help manage money for BFAM Partners and Balyasny Asset Management. Hong Kong-based BFAM oversaw about $5 billion at its peak, delivering gains in each of its first nine years before falling victim to China’s property bond rout.
Engel-Hall, who is now based in New York and will lead an equity long-short team at Millennium, was with London-based Marshall Wace for about eight years.
Millennium has doubled assets over six years, earning a reputation as one of the most prolific hirers of trading talent in the industry. It employs more than 330 investment teams globally, imposing tight risk limits to help churn out steady returns even as markets wobble. It returned 12.5% in the first 11 months of this year.
Having helped multi-strategy, multi-manager hedge funds firms nearly triple assets since 2017, investors have slowed new allocations. In the 12 months through June 2024, the firms’ combined assets declined for the first time in seven years, amid elevated interest rates, Goldman Sachs said in a report in September. That has heightened pressure on them to deliver market-beating returns, intensifying an already cutthroat battle for talent.
About a third of the decline in their asset base in the latest year was due to voluntary returns of capital from firms trying to manage capacity, the Goldman report said. Firms often resort to such moves when they can’t find enough investment professionals or opportunities in the prevailing market environment to keep up with asset growth.
Millennium, the largest of those companies, earlier told clients it was raising as much as $10 billion of new capital for its hedge fund. Investors instead wanted to fork over twice that amount, signaling that there’s still plenty of demand for the top firms.
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