- The biggest US-based multimanagers like Citadel and Point72 still have their investors in longtime locales.
- London and Hong Kong, regulatory filings show, have hundreds of people, while Dubai and Singapore trail.
- London, in particular, is still a massive hub for US-based managers, data show.
London is far from dead in the hedge fund industry, despite many predictions about its soon-to-come demise.
Following the Labour Party’s electoral victory this past summer and the Brexit vote in 2016, there’s been chatter that London is losing its standing as a global financial hub. Other cities in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have all been vying to pry off a piece of the city’s business.
But regulatory filings for some of the biggest US-based multimanagers, including Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny, show that offices in Mayfair and elsewhere in London were packed with hundreds of investors for these funds, at least as of March of last year. Their numbers in the English capital far outweigh, for now, that of offices in locales trying to lure investors away with lower taxes and warmer weather, including Dubai.
Filings for Citadel, Point72, Balyasny, Schonfeld, Verition, Walleye, and Hudson Bay show that London has more than half its international investing talent. Millennium and ExodusPoint, two other large, US-based multimanagers, do not list their international offices on their regulatory filings and are not included in the graphic.
A person close to Millennium points out the firm has a large international presence, and the $72 billion manager’s website notes it operates from more than 140 different places around the world, a majority of which have investment staff. The firm has 18 locations that are deemed “primary offices,” and 12 are located outside the US, including London, Paris, Dubai, and Hong Kong.
ExodusPoint declined to comment, but its website states that it has offices in London, Dubai, Jersey, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. (The story continues below the graphic.)
Following the UK’s official exit from the European Union in 2020, many predicted cities like Paris would become more formidable financial hubs. However, investing talent in European cities, including the French capital, Copenhagen, and Milan, is dwarfed by outposts in the UK. Dubai has not yet made a significant dent in London’s head count.
Similarly, in Asia, Singapore was expected to take some of Hong Kong’s business, as increased geopolitical tensions between the region and China worried US-based managers, but that has not yet been the reality on the ground.
Of the seven firms that disclosed their international offices, only Verition has more investing talent based in Singapore than Hong Kong. Verition, its December 2024 filing shows, has 13 people who “perform investment advisory functions” in Singapore and no Hong Kong office at all.
Point72, meanwhile, has more than double the number of investors in Hong Kong — 92 — than it does in Singapore, as well as significant footprints in Tokyo, Taipei, and Sydney.
Still, Dubai and Singapore are growing.
In Asia, for example, Bobby Jain’s new firm, Jain Global — which wasn’t included in this data review because it listed only its New York headquarters in its first regulatory filing in September — chose Singapore as its first Asia hub, tapping former Morgan Stanley executive Sam Kellie-Smith to lead the office.
Hudson Bay, meanwhile, states on its website that it has a Dubai outpost, though it did not list the office in its regulatory filings. The firm did not respond to a request for comment as to why. Walleye’s only international office outside Europe is in Dubai.
Recruiters and fund executives say eastward movement from London is driven by two things: talent and capital. Senior PMs who want to sit in the Middle East — for tax purposes or other reasons — can demand it given the tight talent market and high demand for money-making investors, and funds that set up in the region often hope to tap into the massive pools of sovereign wealth capital in the region.
“There is a certain element of Dubai being new and shiny,” said James Barfield, buy-side client director for recruiting firm Selby Jennings, “but that doesn’t mean a hedge fund is going uproot from New York and London and move their entire operations there.”
“I don’t see New York or London ever really losing their status,” he said.
