(Bloomberg) -- China’s $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund hired former Point72 Asset Management veteran Jane Zhao to lead its proprietary quantitative stocks investment team, people familiar with the matter said.

Zhao has joined Beijing-based China Investment Corp. as a managing director at the public equities department to oversee the quant trading team, the people said, requesting not to be named because the matter is private. The appointment came after Zhang Rong, a director who was in charge of the team, resigned at the end of 2021 to seek other opportunities, Bloomberg reported earlier. 

CIC set up a proprietary quant trading platform in 2015 as the fund tried to bolster internal management of overseas investments to enhance its own investing capabilities. While the company has lost more than 20 team leaders and managing directors in recent years, efforts since 2020 to enhance high-level recruitment have replenished its talent pool with senior hires like Zhao and Yu Bin, from Neuberger Berman Group.

“CIC is committed to garner high-caliber, dedicated professionals, and to build a first-class team that is characterized by excellence and effectiveness,” the company said in a reply to Bloomberg.

CIC has disclosed little on its proprietary investments. Returns for several self-managed portfolios “significantly exceeded” benchmarks, it said in its 2015 annual report. 

Zhao was as a portfolio manager at Boston-based PanAgora Asset Management Inc. between 2006 and 2016, before working as a senior risk officer at Point72 for one year, according to her LinkedIn profile. More recently, she was an adjunct professor at New York University.

She has a bachelor’s degree in statistics from Beijing-based Renmin University of China, and holds a doctorate in finance from the University of Arizona, according to the profile. 

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