Mike Blake/Reuters
Ken Griffin speaks at the 2019 Milken conference.
- Faron Schonfeld, COO of the Citadel's global equities arm, and Brian Conn, a longtime portfolio manager, are both leaving Ken Griffin's firm, sources tell Business Insider.
- Citadel has wooed several money-managers from rival Point72 with large pay packages, according to a media report.
- Griffin's firm, which manages $32 billion, has had several changes among the leadership of its separate units, including the closing of stock-picking arm Aptigon earlier in the year.
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Ken Griffen's Citadel is losing an executive and and a longtime portfolio manger from its global equities business, sources tell Business Insider.
The departures come soon after a report that Citadel has poached money managers from a major rival - Steve Cohen's Point72.
Brian Conn, a portfolio manager covering financials for the global equities business, had been at Citadel since 2006, according to his LinkedIn, and is leaving the $31 billion hedge fund for personal reasons, a source familiar with the situation said.
An analyst on his team, Alex Ofsevit, has been promoted to fill his role. Three other analysts in global equities - Cole Patterson, Karl Richter, and Mark Wienkes - were promoted to portfolio managers this year.
"We are grateful to Brian for his contributions over the past nearly 14 years and wish him well," a Citadel spokesman said.
See more: Inside the Chicago hedge fund turf war between billionaire Ken Griffin and Dmitry Balyasny
Faron Schonfeld, the COO of the global equities business, is also planning to leave Citadel, sources said.
Schonfeld, according to his LinkedIn, has been at Citadel for more than four years after more than a decade at Accenture. A source close to the firm said Schonfeld's replacement has not yet been named, and that Schonfeld will stay on for an interim basis until his successor is determined.
Citadel's flagship fund was up 13.5% for the year through the end of June. A source said all five strategies were positive for the year, and that the two resignations were not related to performance.
Citadel's global equities team grew significantly after the firm cut its Aptigon stock-picking unit earlier this year.
Aptigon, which was run by Eric Felder, was shuttered just two years after launching, and the teams that stayed on at Citadel were spread across global equities, Ashler Capital, and Surveyor Capital.
Citadel has also been aggressively adding tenured money managers. According to the recent Wall Street Journal report, Griffin's firm has poached David Corwin and Justin Lubell - the latter of whom ran a $1 billion book focused on technology - from Point72.