Stephen Gibson has joined Cardinal Asset Management to work with Phillip Wale on the launch of its multi-strategy equity hedge fund.

Gibson said: "Phillip Wale and I have a long-standing professional relationship covering a number of equity trading cycles. We have spent many years discussing and identifying the optimal way for us to best express our market views and generate consistent profitability. Together we have almost forty years of top-level trading experience at international institutions. It is the right time in our career to launch this fund and the right time in the markets to focus on extracting significant value across a range of trading conditions, and more importantly, to do so on a consistent basis."

Gibson was formerly Managing Partner of the London office of First New York Securities LLC. At First New York Gibson actively managed and traded a UK and European proprietary equity portfolio involving directional trades, special situations, statistical arbitrage and ADR arbitrage. He was responsible for developing and leading a team of thirty traders within the London operations of First New York.

Prior to First New York, Gibson spent twelve years at Merrill Lynch where he was Director of European Equity Trading. Throughout his trading career, Gibson, with a detailed knowledge of financial markets, products and trading strategies, has demonstrated consistent profitability across a wide range of market conditions.

Cardinal is the exclusive provider of hedge fund product to ISIS Asset Management. This role has now been expanded following the Howard Carter led ISIS merger with F&C and the subsequent creation of one of the UK's biggest asset managers with over USD 220 billion dollars of traditional assets under management. ISIS has a 15% interest in Cardinal with Carter retaining a seat on the Cardinal board.