More than half of the Hong Kong-licensed employees who have left Segantii Capital Management since May have landed new roles at rival hedge funds including Jain Global and Qube Research & Technologies, as the firm grapples with insider trading allegations, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The report cites Hong Kong’s regulatory registry as showing that 19 of the 35 staff members who departed Segantii in the past five months have secured positions at international and regional hedge fund firms.
Other global firms to hire ex-Segantii employees include Jump Trading LLC, while regional competitors Dymon Asia Capital (Singapore) Pte and Ovata Capital Management Ltd have also made appointments.
Notably, Jain Global recruited at least four former Segantii employees, including portfolio manager Kaushik Ramakrishnan, while Ng Lap Kiu, Segantii’s former Asia trading head, joined Ovata as a Portfolio Manager.
Additionally, Polynomial Partners, a new Singapore-based systematic equity hedge fund founded by Nivesh Kumar and Arpit Mathur, is reportedly bringing together 10 former Segantii colleagues across Asia, the UK, and the US.
Segantii, once a regional hedge fund giant managing assets that peaked at $6.2 billion in 2021, has been under scrutiny since May, when Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission announced insider trading charges against the firm, its founder Simon Sadler, and former trader Daniel La Rocca. The allegations stem from a 2017 block trade. While the legal proceedings are still in the early stages, the charges prompted some investors and banks to review their relationships with the firm, leading Segantii to return capital to investors in May.
