Morning Coffee: Hedge fund explains why its $10m+ ex-Citi MD is so special. HSBC's Hong Kong bankers may be less fecund in the future

Once they join Citi, people don't always appear to leave again. But George Saghir joined Citi in 1985 and left again as an MD 11 years later. George is still going and is now the subject of a battle between big hedge funds.

Saghir has been working for ExodusPoint, the macro-focused multistrategy hedge fund founded by Michael Gelband. But he would like to work for Schonfeld, the hedge fund run by the youthful Ryan Tolkin, who is always prepared for meetings. Saghir wants to work for Schonfeld so much, that he has joined the fund six weeks before he's supposed to.

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Bloomberg reports that Saghir joined Schonfeld on September 2nd. But ExodusPoint has him under a one year non-compete that's due to end only on October 18th. And ExodusPoint is not happy about Saghir's premature arrival.

In a suit filed against Saghir in the Supreme Court of New York, ExodusPoint details why Saghir is so special. He is a "highly specialized Portfolio Manager," says ExodusPoint. He has "unique investment judgment and capital deployment expertise." He is, "specialized in taking positions on broad macroeconomic and geopolitical trends spanning multiple asset classes and geographies."

Most importantly, ExodusPoint says Saghir is particularly good at developing trading strategies "in response to public economic announcements, such as the publication of non-farm payroll (“NFP”) numbers, consumer price index (“CPI”) data, and Federal Reserve announcements." There have been significant announcements recently and, ExodusPoint feels particularly aggrieved. Now that Saghir is working again, he'll be able to trade against the release of September's economic data in early October, says ExodusPoint. Worse, ExodusPoint says it may be obliged to trade against him. 

It's not clear how Saghir feels about this. We have not spoken to him and he didn't respond to Bloomberg's request to comment. However, having your talents aired in public is surely no bad thing. Over the circa 3.5 years that he actually worked there, ExodusPoint says it paid Sahir "tens of millions of dollars." It also says Saghir negotiated an increase in his "incentive rate" which lifted his compensation in return for extending his non-compete from six to nine months. 

ExodusPoint says it's been paying Saghir's salary during his non-compete period and will continue to do so until October. Saghir, who lives in Larchmont, a village north of New York City, and who was recently seen selling a Tudor-style mansion with a pool and kitchen island, presumably wanted to get back to work. 

Schonfeld didn't comment for Bloomberg's article. It clearly likes hiring extremely talented macro portfolio managers and was also recently involved in a dispute with Millennium after attempting to poach Adam Grunfeld, whom it described as possessing "unique investment judgment, strategy design, and capital deployment expertise developed over many years." Grunfeld never worked for Citi, but began his career at Balyasny in 2004. 

Separately, if you work for HSBC in Hong Kong and are thinking of producing many children then think again.

The Financial Times reports that HSBC was paying $38k in school fee subsidies for new hires at director level and above in Hong Kong, partly to attract people to work there. It won't be doing that any more. 

Fortunately, HSBC's Hong Kong employees who already have large families can still benefit from the perk. So can Hong Kong employees with children due in 2026. All others will need to pay the fees themselves. 

The changes come after HSBC altered its hierarchy five years ago so that some of its lavish perks at the time (first class airline travel and fancy accommodation in Hong Kong along with big pay rises) would be available to fewer people thereafter.

Meanwhile...

Barclays wants people back in the office from three days a week (instead of two) from next month. Barclays staff with commutes longer than 40 minutes would like to be exempt from this edict. People would also like to commute at off-peak times and to receive a payment to offset the extra costs. (FT)

Nomura says equities trading has been solid, that FX and emerging markets revenues have recovered, but that rates trading has been "challenging." (Bloomberg) 

Now that rates are rising, Apollo thinks some private equity firms might shrink. “I do think you will see a squeezing of the number of managers and maybe some managers that grew really rapidly over the last decade will have to contract back down.” (WSJ) 

JPMorgan appears to be limiting some engineers to Claude budgets of $2k a month. (Business Insider) 

Revolut is planning a dual listing in New York and London. This is why. “It’s a larger market. It includes institutional investors, hedge funds, fund managers and a considerable number of individual investors.” (Financial Times) 

Revolut's Nik Storonsky bought a €350 million superyacht with a cryotherapy chamber this year. A yacht broker says he owes it €17.5m in commissions. Storonsky says this is not so. (The Times)  

Backdoor references are a bigger thing in the age of AI applications. "I heard about a man whose candidacy was doomed by a thumbs-down from his stepmother, who worked in the same industry." (WSJ) 

Now that AI is about, Kim Posnett, co-head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, has been telling people to 'lean into apprenticeship acceleration, and focus on distinctly human qualities that matter in business.' (Business Insider)  

The SEC is interviewing current and former employees of Guggenheim Investments as they scrutinise the CEO's business empire. (Bloomberg) 

After making money on the SpaceX IPO, one 35-year-old SpaceX employee and his wife are having a "year of freak" and spending $25k a month on travel and things like acting classes. (WSJ)  

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