Millennium, Citadel bolster staff size as biggest hedgefunds keep growing
The big keep getting bigger. The world's largest hedge funds, including Balyasny Asset Management, Citadel and Millennium Management expanded their staff count by hundreds over the past year as they also grew their assets under management.
In a repeat of last year, many multistrategy hedge funds that employ numerous trading teams across a variety of strategies saw the largest staff size growth. All the hedge funds either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment on staff size.
Many hedge funds report year-end 2024 figures in their 2025 ADV filings. Firms are required to list all full- and part-time workers except for clerical staff.
Pensions &Investments compared new Form ADV filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late March with filings from the prior year in order to tally staff size changes.
Over the last few years, many hedge funds have been hiring as they add new businesses, in areas including private credit, systematic credit, commodities, and foreign exchange, said Roark Stahler, managing director and head of strategic consulting Americas at Barclays' prime services business.
“The size is orthogonal. As they grow, they become more complex with more people in treasury and operations — it’s a function of running a bigger business,” he said. “Most of that scales. What doesn’t scale is the portfolio managers, and that is why they need to hire more and more of them… They want non-correlated returns from those PMs.”
It’s an observation echoed by recruiters.
“I don’t think there has been outsized hiring, there are upgrades as usual and additional head count,” said Alexis DuFresne, founder of Archer Search Partners, an alternatives recruiting firm focused on front office search. “At the biggest multistrats, they are building out other product suites … those businesses that are branching to other investing arenas, that’s where we are seeing hiring.”
But it’s a good time to be a sought-after portfolio manager because demand is insatiable at the same time assets under management are increasing at the biggest hedge funds, said Neal Berger, chief investment officer at Eagle’s View Capital Management, a long time allocator to multistrategy hedge funds, in an email.
“The talent war has escalated the acquisition cost of highly sought-after portfolio managers in the form of upfront guarantees, higher performance-based compensation, phantom equity, and other desirable perks to entice talent,” he said. “It’s challenging for smaller funds to acquire the best and brightest talent as they simply cannot compete with the large funds.”
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