Hedge fund Brevan Howard hired Eisler's 2nd most significant quant

Hedge fund Eisler Capital may have failed, but this does not mean its people are failures. Balyasny Asset Management is a fan of its portfolio managers (PMs). So too is Brevan Howard. And now, Brevan has hired Eisler's second most desirable quant to accompany the former Eisler PMs it hired already.

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Valdo Durrleman, who was a managing director and the head of desk strats at Eisler, has reappeared at Brevan Howard, where he is the new head of quantitative analytics. 

Brevan Howard did not respond to a request to comment on Durrleman's arrival. It's not clear whether he has shunted someone aside at Brevan or whether his is an entirely new role there. 

Durrleman spent seven and a half years at Eisler and has been a dedicated acolyte of Sam Wisnia, Eisler's sometimes eccentric deputy chief investment officer. Wisnia himself joined Eisler from Deutsche Bank in 2018; so did Durrelman. Wisnia joined Deutsche Bank from Goldman Sachs in 2015; so did Durrleman. The two are chums.

It's understood that Durrleman was instrumental in building Kannon, the risk and analytics system that Wisnia pioneered at Deutsche Bank. Then he was instrumental in building Photon, the similar risk and analytics system that Wisnia pioneered at Eisler. 

Writing in late December, Business Insider said Eisler was considering selling Photon as a standalone product and suggested that it had spoken to rival funds Verition and Taula about buying it. Verition and Taula did not confirm this. Durrleman's disappearance may not augur well for that plan.

Brevan Howard's technology team has been through a few changes over the past year, with multiple senior people leaving. However, multiple alternative senior people have arrived, including Mike Sanders, Brevan's shiny newish CTO from JPMorgan and Tim Mace, who joined as the head of AI from Man Group. Durrleman will possibly join this cluster with a mandate to create something akin to Kannon and Photon at Brevan. Good luck!

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