Investment banks may be pruning and shrinking their headcount, but the biggest multistrategy hedge funds are still out there, hiring.
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Newly filed US regulatory reports for 10 of the biggest funds (Citadel, Millennium, Balyasny, Point72, Verition, Schonfeld, Walleye, Eisler and Exoduspoint) reveal that the top funds now employ a combined 15,665 people in total, of whom 7,103 are investment staff.
In combination, they’re like a small investment bank circa 2006.
They’re still growing. In the past year, Citadel, Millennium, ExodusPoint, Point72 and Balyasny alone have added 1,663 people in total.
The chart below shows how many people currently work for the biggest multistrategy hedge funds, and how many assets these funds each have under management. (If you can’t view this on your mobile phone, try looking on your desktop as we’re having issues with charts displaying correctly 😔). Millennium is by far the biggest, with twice as many investment staff as the second-biggest multistrategy fund (Citadel).
In the past year, Millennium has added 260 net new investment staff, while Citadel has added 62. Point72 was the second-biggest net new hirer of investment professionals in 2024, with 186 additions. ExodusPoint, which saw $1bn of funds yanked in 2023, still added 32 portfolio managers last year. Balyasny has 13 fewer investment staff than the last time we checked.
Multistrategy hedge funds are hedge funds that operate teams across multiple investment strategies with a view to generating alpha in all markets. Capital is allocated from a central pot across different teams (fondly known as pods) and portfolio managers typically get to keep around 20% of their pnl, something which can be very lucrative indeed. On the other hand, though, if their pod makes a loss they typically get “stopped out” and their pod is disbanded, as ex-JPMorgan high yield trader Bhavit Sawjani has recently discovered to his detriment at ExodusPoint.
Achieving a job in a multistrategy hedge fund is not at all easy. Balyasny recently revealed that only accepts 0.5% of applicants for its internships. Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, said last week that the fund accepted fewer than 1% of applicants last year.
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