- Brevan Howard hired Gurpreet Singh as CTO of its Alpha Strategies fund.
- Singh is the former CTO of Point72’s quant-trading group Cubist.
- Brevan Howard has been ramping up hiring amid a strong streak of returns.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Brevan Howard has hired a chief technology officer for one of its largest strategies as the $13 billion hedge fund ramps up hiring amid a streak of strong returns.
Gurpreet Singh, formerly the CTO at Point72 Asset Management’s Cubist unit, is set to join Brevan Howard’s Alpha Strategies fund next week as CTO, according to sources familiar with the matter. Singh departed last summer after more than a decade at Point72.
Brevan Howard declined to comment through a company spokesman.
The hedge fund has been angling to build out the Alpha Strategies unit — a multi-manager, systematic fund with a focus on relative value and directional strategies in fixed income and FX. It made a rash of hires last summer, including hiring a US business development head for Alpha Strategies.
The Alpha Strategies unit, which launched in fall 2018, returned 15.4% last year and accounted for nearly 30% of the master fund’s assets, according to a report from Bloomberg.
It was one bright spot among many for Brevan Howard in 2020, as its master fund returned 27.4% — its best mark since 2003, according to Bloomberg. The firm, which saw assets dwindle to $6 billion in 2018, has rebounded the past two years, with assets more than doubling to $13 billion.
Singh’s arrival adds seasoned quant technology firepower to the Alpha Strategies fund. Singh held senior tech positions at billionaire Steve Cohen’s investment firms for 17 years, most of it in the Point72’s Cubist Systematic Strategies division.
He worked at SAC Capital — the predecessor to Point72 before Cohen came under fire from regulators and temporarily converted to a family office — from 2003 to 2009 as director of trading technology. He helped build Point72’s quant-trading platform as head of multiquant technology within Cubist up until 2014, when he was promoted to CTO of the unit, according to his LinkedIn bio.
Singh served as interim CTO for the whole firm for a year starting in 2018, and he added oversight of trading and compliance technology to his purview before departing in June 2020.
Longtime Cubist head Ross Garon left last summer for Millennium Partners and was replaced by former PDT exec Denis Dancanet.
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