Surveyor Capital, an equities arm of Ken Griffin's $30 billion Citadel, axed longtime portfolio manager Adam Wolfman and his team of three analysts in December 2018, sources tell Business Insider.
The poor year and a tough environment for traditional stock pickers have also pushed other multistrategy firms, including 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 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 spokesperson for Citadel declined to comment.
Citadel, which has credit, fixed-income, commodities, and quant strategies to go along with its stock-picking arms, posted solid returns in 2018 in its main multistrategy 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.
Citadel is known for aggressive layoffs 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, and it added more than 50 investment professionals to Surveyor in 2018, according to a person close to the firm.
Overall, there are roughly 30 portfolio managers at Surveyor, a source close to the firm said.
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