Allan Merrill, head of the merger event driven desk at Eric Mindich’s Eton Park Capital Management, is joining Ken Griffin’s multistrategy hedge fund firm Citadel and bringing his team with him, Institutional Investor has learned.
The news follows Mindich’s announcement earlier this year that he is returning investors’ capital and converting the hedge fund firm into a family office. Merrill has told friends and colleagues that he, along with three analysts and one administrative assistant from Eton Park, will join Citadel’s Surveyor Capital business at the end of June. Surveyor is one of three equity groups that manages capital for the firm’s multistrategy funds, Kensington and Wellington. Wellington has returned 5.5 percent for the year-to-date, according to a person familiar with the fund’s performance.
Merrill is likely to add more analysts to his group over time. The team is expected to follow the same approach it employed at Eton Park.
One thing Merrill will not be doing is moving to Chicago, where the $26 billion Citadel is headquartered. Merrill will be based out of Greenwich, Connecticut, with the rest of his investment team working in New York and London. About 75 people work out of Citadel’s Greenwich office.
Merrill could, however, catch up with Griffin in New York on June 21st. Both are planning to attend Institutional Investor’s Hedge Fund Industry Awards dinner in New York on June 21st, where both are being honored: Griffin, 48, with the manager Lifetime Achievement award and Merrill as one of this year’s Hedge Fund Rising Stars.
Merrill, 41, joined Eton Park in 2007 from Stark Investments, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin investment firm he joined in 2004 after graduating with a joint MBA and law degree from Harvard University.
