Refugees from ailing Eisler are gathering at another London hedge fund
Eisler, the hedge fund founded by Ed Eisler, is shutting down. Its 250-ish employees have been turning up all across its rivals, and there is one firm that is increasingly becoming a meeting point: London-based hedge fund Brevan Howard.
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The newest Eisler face at Brevan is Benjamin Spielman, who joined the fund as an ECM portfolio manager in New York this week. Spielman spent less than a year at Eisler – he joined the firm in March last year – and was at Rokos Capital Management before that.
Spielman will find a few familiar faces around the office. Two more Eisler PMs joined Brevan back in November: Alberto Fabbri and Kumar Velayudham in London and New York, respectively. Fabbri also joined Eisler in early 2025, and was head of trading for a family office before that. Velayudham, meanwhile, had spent more than two years at the firm before it floundered.
Other Eisler veterans are moving and getting hefty promotions out of it. Seye Fasan, a former Eisler VP in its capital development team in New York, moved to investment bank Jefferies to head up its EMEA capital introduction offering in London this week.
Eisler’s people are in a pretty privileged position. One insider at the firm told us that he had received a dozen calls from headhunters on the day of the closing announcement. Part of their appeal is the lack of non-competes, but also because Eisler employed a lot of capable people who would have been in good positions in the job anyway.
Moving to Brevan might not be the very best choice right now, however. In London, it cut bonuses for its members (UK legal jargon for partners in a partnership - usually portfolio managers) for the year ending March 2025. It also cut salaries, although to a lesser degree.
It's too early to tell how 2025 pay will be, but there are some indications: for one, Business Insider reported last week that its flagship $11bn Master Fund only returned 0.8% last year. Its Alpha Strategies fund, which also manages $11bn, returned 8%. Its Emerging Markets Strategy performed better - 15% up across the year - while managing just $1bn.
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