Joon Park, a cofounder of Kodai Capital, is rejoining the multistrategy fray in a new role at Balyasny.
Park, who started Kodai Capital with former Citadel portfolio manager Neville Shah in 2020 with money from Millennium, will be the chief operating officer of equities at $23 billion Balyasny, two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
In the new role, Park will report directly to Dmitry Balyasny, the firm’s founder, who runs the equities unit and has remade the group alongside executives such as Steve Schurr and Archana Parekh.
Balyasny declined to comment. Bloomberg earlier reported Park’s move and the shuttering of Kodai.
Park’s impending departure contributed to Kodai’s decision to return capital to its investors, three people with knowledge of the decision said. The firm’s poor performance was another factor in the decision, these people said. Kodai had lost money last year and through 2025’s tumultuous first quarter, though the exact amount is unclear.
Kodai, Park, and Shah did not immediately return requests for comment.
The Kodai founding team was among the most notable examples to take a check from Millennium to start their firm, a structure that billionaire Izzy Englander’s firm has increasingly turned to to lure top talent to manage the behemoth’s ever-growing assets.
Kodai had managed to raise capital from backers other than Millennium, people close to the manager said, and built a sizable team in four years. A recent regulatory filing said the manager had 21 investment professionals on staff.
Park is not an investor, working in operations at several managers, including Alyeska and Citadel, before starting Kodai with Shah and serving as the firm’s president and COO. Park and Shah worked together at Citadel in the Miami-based firm’s Global Equities unit.
