Viridian Asset Management, a new hedge fund firm led by Pascal Guttieres, a former portfolio manager at Segantii Capital Management, has received approval in principle from Hong Kong’s securities watchdog, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The report cites an email update sent to clients and potential investors as revealing that Viridian, which is expected to receive a full license from the Securities and Futures Commission within days, plans to begin trading on 1 August.
While Guttieres is gearing up to launch his new firm, his old boss Simon Sadler and firm Segantii, along with a former trader, have been charged with insider trading in 2017 by the SFC and are facing criminal prosecution.
“The same governing body prosecuting Pascal’s previous employer is authorising him to run an asset management business in Hong Kong, focused on ECM,” the email stated, referring to the new firm’s equity capital markets focus.
The case against Segantii, which is still pending trial, has already resulted in the closure of one of Asia’s largest and most consistently performing hedge funds. Segantii employed 151 people across Hong Kong, London, New York, and Dubai and managed nearly $4.8bn before announcing in May that it would return capital to clients.
Guttieres previously led UBS Group’s block trading team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa before moving to Hong Kong in 2012 to oversee the same business in Asia. He joined Segantii in June 2016 as a portfolio manager, handling deals arranged by banks’ ECM desks that required “wall crossing” – a process where clients agree not to act on confidential information shared before upcoming deals. This period coincides with the block trade now under prosecution for insider dealing.
Viridian is expected to start trading with nearly a dozen staff members and between $100m and $200m in capital from a European insurer and other investors. The firm has enlisted UBS and Citigroup as its prime brokers and is setting up arrangements to trade with nearly 20 banks and brokers initially, aiming to expand this number to over 30 by year-end.
