Albar Capital Partners is to return external cash to investors and continue running its London-based market-neutral equities strategy exclusively for founder Javier Velazquez’s former employer Millennium, according to a report buy Bloomberg.
The report cites unnamed people familiar with the mater as revealing that the arrangement will see Albar return money to its outside clients before operating independently with capital supplied by Millennium.
Albar, which manages around $1.5bn, runs a market-neutral long-short equity strategy focused primarily on European stocks, with additional exposure to US and Asian equities.
Representatives for Millennium and Albar reportedly declined to comment.
The agreement reflects Millennium’s expanding approach of identifying successful portfolio managers, backing them with external capital and subsequently bringing those relationships into its own capital base.
The $92bn multi-strategy hedge fund, led by Izzy Englander, has long cultivated trading talent by allowing managers to operate with significant autonomy. More recently, it has increasingly provided capital to managers launching independent firms and invested in outside hedge funds, while also exploring additional arrangements to replace third-party capital with Millennium money.
The strategy mirrors a deal announced earlier this year involving Bobby Jain. Under that arrangement, Jain Global agreed to return external investor capital and manage money exclusively for Millennium as part of a strategic partnership.
Millennium has also previously brought managers back into its platform. Neville Shah, who had run capital at his own firm Kodai Capital Management after working for Millennium, returned to the firm after giving back external investor money.
Albar began trading in July 2018 with backing from Millennium. The firm has concentrated largely on European equities, with smaller allocations to US and Asian markets.
The strategy has generated positive returns in every full year since launch apart from its partial 2018 trading period. It gained 1.1% during the first six months of 2026, following a 4.4% return in 2025.
Albar’s annual returns were 8.6% in 2019, 7.6% in 2020, 6.7% in 2021, 5.7% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023 and 11.4% in 2024.
