Ken Griffin's $30 billion Citadel is the latest hedge fund to cut stock-pickers

• Citadel's Surveyor Capital unit has axed long-short portfolio manager Adam Wolfman and his team of three analysts, sources tell Business Insider.
• Surveyor's top stock-picking portfolio manager Jack Woodruff is also leaving the firm to start his own fund, which Griffin will be a big investor in.
• The firm's stock-picking unit is losing talent at the same time other multi-strategy managers, like BlueMountain Capital and Jana Partners, have gotten out of the stock-picking space altogether.

Even hedge funds that were able to finish 2018 with positive returns are paring back their stock-picking teams.

Surveyor Capital, an equities arm of $30 billion Citadel, has axed long-time portfolio manager Adam Wolfman and his team of three analysts, sources tell Business Insider. The poor year and a tough environment for traditional stock-pickers has also pushed other multi-strategy firms like Jana Partners and BlueMountain Capital Management to get out of the space completely.

Wolfman joined Citadel in 2014 after nearly a decade at Asian Century Quest, where he had a managed a portfolio of more than $750 million, according to his LinkedIn. Prior to that, Wolfman was an analyst at Maverick Capital and Lehman Brothers.

Wolfman could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Citadel declined to comment.

Citadel - which has credit, fixed income, commodities and quant strategies to go along with its stock-picking arms - posted a solid returns in 2018 in its main, multi-strategy fund of 9.1%, according to a source familiar with the matter.

That compares to a loss of 4% on average for hedge funds last year.

Ken Griffin's Citadel is known for aggressive lay-offs following poor performance. Surveyor Capital is also losing one of its top portfolio managers in Jack Woodruff, a veteran of billionaire Steve Cohen's SAC Capital who is starting his own fund. Griffin is said to be an investor in Woodruff's new fund.

The fund has built out certain areas of Surveyor over the last year, expanding to Europe with a London office run by Sean Salji, who was previously with Citadel's global equities team. In 2018, it also recruited portfolio manager Jeremy Klaperman from D.E. Shaw to join Surveyor's New York office and lead a team focused on industrials. Overall, there are roughly 30 portfolio managers at Surveyor, a source close to the firm said.

Sign up here for our weekly newsletter Wall Street Insider, a behind-the-scenes look at the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.