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Steve Cohen's Point72 Is Said to Hire Macro Team From Balyasny

Steve Cohen's Point72 Is Said to Hire Macro Team From Balyasny

(Bloomberg) -- Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is beefing up macro investing by poaching a five-person team from Balyasny Asset Management.

Portfolio managers Zorin Finkelsen, Dudley Hoskin, Jamie Pullen and two analysts recently joined Point72, said people familiar with the moves. They jumped after starting at Dmitry Balyasny’s firm late last year. Before that, they worked together at Paul Tudor Jones’s shop. Peter Williams, another Balyasny portfolio manager, also left for Point72 earlier this year.

Point72 has been on a hiring spree. It raised about $3 billion in outside capital this year after a two-year ban on trading client money. The Stamford, Connecticut-based firm recently snapped up employees from Morgan Stanley’s electronic trading desk, the Equity Trading Lab, said the people, who asked not to be named.

In its first four months as a hedge fund, Point72 has done better than the industry broadly, returning 4.6 percent through April, a person familiar with the matter said. Hedge funds, on average, were about flat and the S&P 500 Index was down 0.4 percent. In February’s rout, Point72 lost about 1 percent.

The fund is in the middle of the pack compared to other multistrategy giants. Citadel gained 6.9 percent in its flagship Wellington and Kensington funds this year through April, people said. Millennium Management rose 4.4 percent and Balyasny’s Atlas Global fund declined 1.5 percent in that period.

The returns for $12 billion Point72 -- comprised mostly of Cohen’s personal fortune -- are far below what he produced at SAC Capital Advisors, which gained an annualized 30 percent. That was before the firm pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2013. Cohen wasn’t charged with wrongdoing.

Steve Cohen's Point72 Is Said to Hire Macro Team From Balyasny

Cohen’s recent hires follow the departure of Point72 president Doug Haynes, who stepped down in March after an employee accused him and the firm of discriminating against women and promoting a culture of sexism. Point72 has denied the claims.

Representatives for Point72, Balyasny, Citadel and Millennium declined to comment. Finkelsen and Hoskin didn’t respond to requests for comment and Pullen couldn’t be reached.

--With assistance from Katherine Burton Vincent Bielski Melissa Karsh and Saijel Kishan

To contact the reporter on this story: Hema Parmar in New York at hparmar6@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella

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