Capula Investment Management, the secretive and high-paying hedge fund set up by former J.P. Morgan trader Yan Huo, has been hiring.
Over the last 12 months, headcount has increased in London by nearly 6% – most of these are senior traders making the move across from investment banking.
Even so, Capula has a mere 57 employees registered with the Financial Conduct Authority in London. Finding patterns among such small numbers is hard, but there’s one type of recruit that seems to be favoured – equity derivative traders with Asian exposure.
This month it’s hired Reda El Khayati, a veteran equity derivatives trader from J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong, and Jonathan Vayn, who spent seven years on SocGen’s equity derivatives prop trading desk in the territory.
El Khayati and Vayn are the latest equity derivatives traders to join Capula following the appointment of Cyril Levy-Marchal in April last year. Levy-Marchal was the former global head of equity derivatives trading at J.P. Morgan – and later head of equities trading for Asia. He joined Capula’s expanding HK office.
If you make it to the senior ranks at Capula, the pay can be unusually generous – even in hedge fund terms. Last year, its partners received an average payment of £2.2m, whereas rank and file employees got an average of $425.6k.