Millennium’s Persistent Growth Makes it the Daddy of American Managers in London

By Hedge Fund Insight staff

For many years Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital had the largest London operation of any American hedge fund, whether measured by assets under advisement or staff. That Bacon himself was often based in the English capital just reinforced the significance of the European footprint of the firm. But Moore Capital is no longer the Daddy of the Yankee-flavoured hedge funds of Mayfair. That title now belongs to Millennium Capital Partners.

Recent analysis of hedge fund staff registered with the UK’s financial regulator, the FCA, shows that Izzy Englander’s Millennium Capital Partners now has more professional investment and compliance staff  (registered individuals) than any of the other large American managers.

sources: FCA register/Hedge Fund Insight

The staff numbers (as at the end of September) in the table exclude support, IT and operations staff, but include all individuals with significant management responsibility across all functions (in the c-suite of the European operations).

Millennium Capital Partners LLP has more than doubled the professional staff of its London office since the end of 2010, and has grown staffing levels markedly from the market lows of March 2009, when there were 32 FSA registered staff. In 2011 Millennium added a net 18 people to the professional staff count, and added only 4 to FCA registered numbers last year. This year, however, has seen another  major push to add to the existing investment teams and add whole new teams in the course of which 49 approved persons have joined Millennium, and 18 approved persons have left the firm.

Earlier in the year the hiring was focused on former investment bankers.  Six of the 2013 joiners are now partners in the firm – Asad Abedi and Javier Velazquez joined from GLG Partners, portfolio manager Andres Anker from SAC, trader Matthew Barnett came from Citadel, Patrick Marx joined from Caxton Europe, and Gavin White came back into the partnership.

Since the start of 2012 Millennium Capital’s assets under management have swelled from $14.1bn to $19bn at the end of last month. The firm’s approach is global and multi-strategy, and there is a big bias to internal diversification across strategies. The historic preference has been to hire  seasoned teams with relative value approaches, but that stance has been more difficult to maintain as assets have grown and the number of specialized trading teams has reached 140 in total. So the growth in staff numbers at Millennium Capital Partners in Europe is a reflection of growth of the firm globally (total staff now number 1300 people), but the scale of absolute staff growth in London now makes Millennium the Daddy amongst American hedge fund firms in Europe’s financial centre.

 

 

Notes: [1] Elliott Advisors includes both Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd and Elliott Advisors (London) LLC

[2] Highbridge Capital Management  includes both Highbridge Capital Management (UK) and Highbridge Principal Strategies (UK) LLP

Related article: Millennium Capital Leads the Large US Managers in Europe(Jan 2012)