As hedge funds become more institutional, the most critical employees have shifted from traders to executives.
At $12 billion hedge fund Schonfeld, one longtime investor has given up his book to focus on talent development, two people close to the New York-based multimanager told Business Insider.
Mitesh Parikh stopped trading his portfolio at the end of 2024, these people said. Parikh, the cohead of the firm’s discretionary macro and fixed income unit with Colin Lancaster, ran one of the biggest books in his division, though it’s unclear the exact amount. He made money in each of the three full years he has traded at Schonfeld, they said.
Parikh and Lancaster joined Schonfeld in 2021, closing their hedge fund, Matador Investment Management, to build out a new division with the firm. Less than four years since joining, the pair have more than 60 investment staffers working under them, one person close to the firm said.
Because of the growth of the team, Parikh — who is based in Dubai and was the chief investment officer of Matador and once a portfolio manager for Balyasny — has been repositioned to focus on building the business instead of investing. The decision was not made because of Parikh’s performance, one person said. Last year, multimanager peer Balyasny made the decision to trim the book of its top Asia stockpicker so she could build up the team in the region.
The biggest names in the industry are now managing investors instead of playing the markets themselves. Point72 founder Steve Cohen stepped back from trading last year, and Alan Howard no longer invests for Brevan Howard’s strategies. Bobby Jain, who raised more than $5 billion for the fund he launched last year, sold himself to LPs as an executive, not a market savant.
Parikh is also a big player in the buildout of the firm’s Dubai office, one person close to the manager said, which has added portfolio managers in his unit as well as a variety of strategies, including Delta One and equity long-short.
The macro division reoriented toward relative-value strategies last year, BI reported, and away from more volatile directional bets. Overall, the fund has enjoyed a strong run of performance after a rough 2023 that was dominated by gossip about a possible takeover by larger rival Millennium.
Schonfeld returned 19.7% last year, besting managers like Point72, Millennium, and Citadel. This year, the firm returned 2.2% through February but was stung by the volatility of March’s early days.
