One of the top recruiters of hedge-fund trading talent is on the move.
Michael Grad, global head of business development at Bluecrest Capital, is leaving the investment firm founded by billionaire Michael Platt, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Grad has been the top talent scout and an allocator at Bluecrest since 2017, when he joined from Millennium. Grad and other senior Bluecrest execs did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Industry professionals consider Grad one of the premier BD executives. While recruiting isn’t typically thought of as a revenue-generating role, Grad’s ability to lure talented PMs across an array of strategies is an edge hedge-fund managers covet and pay top dollar for.
Bluecrest was once one of the industry’s top hedge funds, managing more than $35 billion, but it transitioned to a family office in 2016 after a run of poor performance. Grad helped build out the firm after its pivot. The firm has 150 independent trading teams and about 550 globally, one person familiar with the matter said.
Since returning outside money, Bluecrest has been on a tear. It notched returns of 153% in 2022, 20% in 2023, and 38% last year, according to Bloomberg.
The firm was up 28% through May, the person familiar said, thanks in part to currency bets against the US dollar that have paid off due to President Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Given Grad’s stature and Bluecrest’s performance, industry insiders BI spoke to were surprised by the move.
Amid a war for investment talent at multimanager hedge funds like Citadel, Millennium, Point72, and Balyasny, business development teams responsible for scouting, evaluating, and wooing portfolio managers have grown in size and stature. Top funds are spending millions to hire the top BD specialists.
Grad is one of a handful of senior BD professionals who worked under Peter Hornick, a former Millennium exec who also led build-outs at ExodusPoint and Brevan Howard.
Bluecrest promoted two BD leaders beneath Grad in early 2024 — Jake Lindsay as head of US and Mungo Strachan as head of Europe.
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While Platt’s firm isn’t technically a multimanager hedge fund as it doesn’t manage outside capital, it’s similar in practice: Bluecrest has dozens of trading teams that execute a range of different strategies. When they perform well, portfolio managers at Bluecrest reap some of the richest payouts in the industry.
