Corinthian Digital Asset Management, a diversified digital assets offshoot of London-based crypto arbitrage hedge fund Argentium, has named ex-Macquarie and JP Morgan equity research head Peter Redhead as partner and chief operating officer.
Redhead joins as Corinthian, which was established by Argentium founder Paul Frost-Smith, prepares to open its debut hedge fund strategy Chiron to external capital in February 2022.
Redhead previously spent more than five years at Macquarie Global, most recently as global head of equity research. Earlier, he had been managing director and head of EMEA equity research and head of Asian equity research at JP Morgan.
Over the course of his 25 years-plus career, he has also been CEO of leading financial services recruiter The Rose Partnership, and non-executive director of BeQuant, a regulated crypto exchange.
Commenting on the hire, Corinthian CEO Frost-Smith said Redhead’s “drive and entrepreneurial spirit, and keen interest in the development of the crypto markets as they move towards institutional adoption, will be invaluable.”
Chiron, the firm’s first hedge fund in digital assets, runs a core portfolio of crypto outperformance strategies, coupled with an opportunistic trading approach to relative value opportunities in the crypto markets. It seeks to deliver exceptional returns with an actively managed volatility profile.
UAE-headquartered Corinthian was established by ex-JP Morgan and Credit Suisse manager Paul Frost-Smith who, having developed arbitrage-based algorithmic trading strategies at Argentium, looked to broaden his focus across the entire cryptocurrency value chain beyond high frequency arb.
“It is true that some investors want a market neutral approach, but a significant majority do not; they want exposure to potentially great returns but in a managed way and without doing extensive homework. There is a lot of talk around institutional adoption but, despite the hype, that has not happened yet,” Frost-Smith said.
“This asset class has inherent risks and a sensible minimum return hurdle has to be recognised. This is not achievable, in my view, solely through market neutral or arbitrage strategies: the best approach is a long delta, long volatility portfolio, based on relative value, and appropriately hedged.
He added: “In addition, some investors are seeking a more diversified approach through fund of funds or VC products – this is something that Corinthian recognises and is building out, as the market starts to shake out and winners and losers in the many and varied crypto tech battles start to emerge.”
Frost-Smith and Jerome Dupuy are the managing partners of Corinthian, joined by Sophia Herman as partner and head of investments and Peter Redhead as partner and COO. Gejia Ouyang is head of BD APAC and Paola Mantovani is head of BD EMEA and head of investor relations.
