BlueMountain Makes Four Hires for Global Governments Group

Hedge fund firm BlueMountain Capital Management has hired four portfolio managers to build out its government-related investing strategies.

Morgan Alcalay will manage the firm’s relative value global government portfolio, Evan Boulukos will oversee municipal bonds, Phil Hermann will manage U.S. agency mortgage-backed securities, and Andrew Seiz will be responsible for emerging markets strategies, according to a BlueMountain statement Tuesday. 

Regulatory constraints, market fragmentation and increased volatility are creating opportunities for relative value investing across all four of these markets, said Colin Teichholtz, the head of global governments and agency mortgage, in the statement. 

“With the reduction in Wall Street’s balance sheets and proprietary trading since the financial crisis, we see an opportunity for BlueMountain to become a new liquidity provider to the market,” said Teichholtz, who joined the firm in February.

BlueMountain, which manages about $21 billion in assets, see the new hires as a natural evolution of the firm’s other investment strategies, which include long-short and systematic equity, private investment in healthcare and specialty finance, structured credit, and distressed debt.

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Alcalay, who will manage the firm’s interest rates strategy, previously worked in similar roles at Barclays and Goldman Sachs Group, according to statement. 

Boulukos, who will manage BlueMountain’s municipal bond strategy, previously worked at Citigroup, where he managed a proprietary municipal bond portfolio. Before that, Boulukos worked at Lehman Brothers Holdings as an institutional municipal flow trader.

Hermann and Seiz each joined from Pine River Capital, focusing on agency mortgage-backed securities and emerging markets fixed income, respectively.