(Bloomberg) -- Brevan Howard Asset Management has hired Andrew Saxton and David Nash for its Asia credit team, months after cutting around 10% of its global workforce.
Saxton joined as a credit portfolio manager in Hong Kong last month, according to the city’s regulatory records. Nash has been authorized to undertake regulated investment activities for Brevan Howard since late July, according to filings with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
London-based Brevan Howard has been expanding credit trading in the last couple of years. Hiring continued even as the firm in recent months cut jobs, shut loss-making funds and reduced fees for its biggest hedge fund to help rein in costs.
Chief Executive Officer Aron Landy has been ramping up businesses such as credit, digital assets, systematic and commodities along with its core macro trading expertise. The company has seen assets rebound to about $34 billion, after falling from more than $40 billion in 2013 to about $6 billion in 2019. It has been growing its presence around the world, including in Abu Dhabi.
This month’s market turmoil helped its flagship hedge fund swing to a profit for the year, reversing earlier losses. The $12 billion Brevan Howard Master Fund made an estimated 2.3% gain in the first two trading days of August, advancing 1.1% this year through Aug. 2, according to an investor letter seen by Bloomberg News.
Brevan Howard cut about 100 jobs in April to rein in costs, affecting mostly back-office and technology staff but also about 20 traders. About two dozen traders had been let go the previous month. It shut hedge funds run by Alfredo Saitta and Louis Basger after their losses on interest rate trades. It scrapped the 1% management fee for the Alpha Strategies fund until the new year to partly offset technology, infrastructure and talent costs that push expenses passed through to investors too high.
Saxton most recently worked for Dymon Asia Capital, the Singapore-based firm whose business includes a multi-strategy hedge fund.
Modular Departures
Nash joined Modular Asset Management, the Singaporean hedge fund firm spun off from Millennium Management LLC, in 2021 to help Chief Investment Officer Jimmy Lim build out its credit investment team. The filings also show he ceased being a Modular appointee in February.
Other portfolio managers that ceased to be representatives at Modular this year include Daniel Liebau, who joined the firm to invest in blockchain technologies, and Cindy Lau, who is now head of fixed income at Avanda Investment Management.
Liebau said it was a mutual decision to close the Modular Blockchain Fund because institutional investors weren’t allocating capital to the asset class at the time, particularly post the demise of FTX.
The number of portfolio managers at Modular remains largely unchanged since 2021, as the firm added more in Australia and New Zealand, according to a person familiar with the firm who asked not to be named because the information is private.
Modular’s returns through July were 4.6% and it had $1.27 billion in assets under management as of July 31, according to a company newsletter seen by Bloomberg. Its gains in July were led by Japan and Hong Kong rates exposure and Taiwan foreign exchange trading, according to the letter.
Brevan Howard, Modular, Nash and Lau declined to comment.
(Updates with details with more hires at Brevan Howard)
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