Citadel, the $51 billion hedge fund founded by billionaire investor Ken Griffin, has hired Vesal Yazdi as a portfolio manager from rival firm Davidson Kempner Capital Manager, according to a report by BusinessInsider.
The report cites an unnamed source as revealing that Yazdi ran a tech strategy with more than $1 billion in assets at Davidson Kempner and worked at the $38 billion hedge fund for six years.
Yazdi joins Citadel’s global equities business, which is led by Justin Lubell, and is one of the $50 billion hedge fund’s four long-short market neutral equity units.
Prior to Davidson Kempner, Yazdi was an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, a software analyst at Coatue Management, and an analyst at Goldman Sachs, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Citadel’s equities strategy was up 2.5% in September and it’s returned 16.6% year-to-date, according to a person familiar with the hedge fund’s performance.
