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Sourcing talent is the lifeblood of $17.2 billion Millennium Management: If the New York–based multistrategy hedge fund firm founded by Israel (Izzy) Englander doesn’t hire and keep the very best portfolio managers, it can’t do its job. The pressure is on senior investment officer Michael Grad, who identifies that talent and gets it in the door. Grad, 32, started his finance career as a high school senior in 1997, when he interned with fund-of-hedge-funds firm Ivy Asset Management in New York. While earning a BS in finance and information systems at New York University, he got an internship with John Griffin’s famed hedge fund firm Blue Ridge Capital. Grad then spent two years in investment banking before taking a job as an investment manager with the alternatives team at UBS’s New York office. In August 2008 he moved to Millennium, whose annualized return since its 1989 inception is 14.54 percent. The firm has been rebuilding its talent pool, giving Grad plenty of opportunity to hire from banks’ proprietary trading desks and other hedge funds. |
