Martina Slowey, European head of prime brokerage services and global head of prime brokerage sales for UBS, is leaving the Swiss bank to join a hedge fund firm being started by a former Goldman Sachs prop trader.
After 14 years at UBS, Slowey, according to a source who has been briefed on her departure, is going to team up with Pierre-Henri Flamand, who left his post as the head of Goldman Sachs’ Principal Strategies Group in London to start a hedge fund. If history is any guide, Flamand’s fund could take the shape of global multi-strategy, but that is just a guess on my part.
Flamand, who reportedly took home around $100 million in 2006 as head of principal strategies for Goldman, follows in the footsteps of other Goldman proprietary traders — including Dinakar Singh, who had been co-head of Principal Strategies before founding the hedge fund TPG-Axon Capital in 2005 — that have left the job to launch hedge funds. Flamand’s departure could be a harbinger of things to come, as financial regulatory reform banks’ reduction of risk takes a toll on the industry’s proprietary trading desks.
Ironically, UBS’ Global Head of Prime brokerage, Stuart Hendel, left his job as co-head of Morgan Stanley’s U.S. prime brokerage in 2004 to take on the role as COO at another hedge fund firm being started by a Goldman Sachs partner, the New York based Eton Park Capital Management, founded by Eric Mindich.
When Eton Park launched with $3.5 billion in assets under management, it was the largest hedge fund startup at the time. Hendel later returned to prime brokerage and to Morgan Stanley before leaving the bank in early 2009 and joining UBS.
Given the focus on back office and counterparty risk these days, it now makes even more sense for a large hedge fund start up (and even in these cash strapped time one has to assume Flamand can raise some dough) to look for talent from the prime brokerage industry. And Slowey, according to an industry source, is one of the best.
Institutional Investor staff writer Imogen Rose-Smith covers hedge funds, private equity and their investors.
