Ex-JPMorgan Credit Trader’s Hedge Fund Starts With $200 Million

(Bloomberg) -- BirchLane Capital, a hedge fund started by a former top credit trader at JPMorgan Chase & Co. who helped unwind bets made by the so-called London Whale, has started trading with more than $200 million of assets.

Fajr Bouguettaya, who left JPMorgan in 2018 to set up BirchLane in London, received the bulk of his funding from a single investor, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. He has recruited a team of about 10 for the firm, including some former JPMorgan credit-derivative traders, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The hedge fund will invest in bonds and credit derivatives in global markets.

A representative of BirchLane declined to comment.

The coronavirus pandemic is slowing down hedge-fund starts, with investors working from home finding it harder to do due diligence on new money managers. Still, some managers with a track record in the industry are raising capital and planning to open firms, including Fahad Roumani, who previously ran a $1 billion hedge fund for JPMorgan Asset Management, Lansdowne Partners analyst Drew Besser and Peter Avellone, a former Millennium Management portfolio manager.

In addition to running JPMorgan’s Global Business for credit correlation trading, which encompasses trades in complex derivatives such as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, Bouguettaya also ran the bank’s operation in Europe for collateralized loan obligations and asset-backed securities. The group was part of efforts to unwind the trading book of Bruno Iksil, known as the London Whale, who lost at least $6.2 billion for JPMorgan in 2012. Bouguettaya also previously worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.