Why Millennium (& Citadel) love hiring from Goldman Sachs
As Goldman Sachs finalizes its bonuses for 2023 and contemplates paying a bit more to the high performers in its markets division, it will be amply aware that lurking on the sidelines, ready to lure them away, are some of the major multistrategy hedge funds with pockets as deep as oceans.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin explained his admiration for the culture at Goldman Sachs last month when he spoke to students at the London School of Economics. Now, the Financial Times says Izzy Englander at Millennium also has his reasons for loving Goldmanites.
Englander likes people from Goldman because, “Izzy likes the concept of committee, and there are two things he likes in particular about former Goldman people: they tend to respect hierarchies, and they are used to co-heads and committees,” one unnamed Millennium insider informed the FT.
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By comparison, Griffin said he likes the fact that people from Goldman Sachs have good communication skills. "Our colleagues are almost universally good communicators. We copied that from Goldman Sachs. If you look back 15 years, the people at Goldman Sachs were always more poised and articulate, and better able to express concepts,” he informed the students.
Millennium doesn't disclose its pay globally, but average compensation at Millennium Capital Ltd in the UK was $1.3m per head in 2022, while partners at Millennium Capital Partners LLP received $1.6m each in wages and salaries, plus a share of £224m in profits. The last time we looked at Citadel's London pay, it was paying $1.3m in wages and salaries and giving its partners a profit share of $2.2m each. Average pay at Goldman Sachs International in London was a merest $490k per head last year by comparison.
All of these goes to explain why people like to leave Goldman Sachs and go to the big multistrategy hedge funds, which in turn think people from Goldman Sachs are great. It was around this time last year that Millennium hired Anthony Dewell, the top Goldman commodities trader who was allegedly on a package of $30m or so at the bank. No one knows how much Millennium paid Dewell, but Millennium will allegedly pay $60m for people it particularly likes. That's a lot of money to spend on people who respect hierarchy and like decisions made through committees.
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