Hedge fund Balyasny picked up one of Eisler Capital's quant strategists
As employees escape the ship that was Eisler Capital, the hedge fund's quantitative strategists appear particularly in-demand. Rival fund Balyasny already hired multiple of them in the months after Eisler announced its dissolution; now, it's going back to the well once more.
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Tibor Kucs has joined Balyasny as a senior quant researcher. According to his LinkedIn, he's leading a team of quant researchers for equity derivatives multi-asset arbitrage. He spent the last two and a half years at Eisler, also working on equity derivatives.
Like many of Eisler's strats, Kucs came via the strat team of Goldman Sachs. He spent 18 years at Goldman, preceded by a short one-year stint as a graduate at Deutsche Bank, after obtaining a PhD in theoretical particle physics from Stony Brook University.
Balyasny's other Eisler strat hires include Alexander Alekseev, who joined as a portfolio manager in September. He founded a team and brought other five Eisler alums with him at the time.
Eisler's demise was impacted by how much the fund paid its staff. The letter to investors announcing the fund's closure said Eisler struggled with "attracting and retaining experienced money managers," despite accounts for one of its UK entities showing that it paid an average of £820k ($1.1m)
While Eisler's strats leave for rival funds, the man in charge of them is striking off on his own. Sam Wisnia, deputy CIO, is understood to be building his own fund and may bring a lot of Eisler's people with him, especially when the fund stops withholding bonuses for departing staff in March. Business Insider reported last month that Wisnia had a strong influence on the development of Photon, Eisler's prized risk system, and will get a cut of its eventual sale.
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