SAC London team jumps to Moore Capital
A nine-strong team has joined Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital from the closed-down London office of SAC Capital, the hedge fund that pleaded guilty last year after a high-profile US insider trading investigation.
The joint move by SAC’s London-based team, confirmed by a Moore Capital spokesman, is the largest single transfer of staff from the fund manager to a rival since it agreed to pay $1.8bn in civil and criminal penalties as part of a settlement with US regulators in November.
In November SAC Capital, founded by the hedge fund billionaire and art collector Steven Cohen, also agreed to return outside clients’ money, effectively ending its existence as one of the world’s largest and best performing hedge funds and turning it into a family office managing its founder’s wealth.
Mr Cohen, who last year bought Picasso’s “Le Reve” for $155m at auction, has not been criminally charged as part of the insider trading probe, but has been accused by the US market regulator of not properly monitoring behaviour at his hedge fund. He has denied the claim.
A spokesman for Moore confirmed that two analysts and seven portfolio managers, were joining from SAC. They are Israa Al Bayaa, Nicholas Aldridge, Arjun Menon, Alexios Papaconstantinou, Bramen Singanayagam, Martin Stapleton, Louis Villa, Atallah Esptephan and Rahil Kuchiera.