Hamza Lemssouguer's Arini Capital Management is doing more than ok

Aged 29, Hamza Lemssouguer was the darling of London's credit trading industry. Working on Credit Suisse's high yield desk, he reportedly made $120m in a single year. Aged 35, Lemssouguer is possibly having less of a good time: he runs his own $20bn credit hedge fund Arini Capital Management, and Arini was reportedly down 8% in July and another 1% in August.

Both the Financial Times and Bloomberg have raked over Lemssouguer's woes, which are reportedly the result of soured bets on the likes of Aston Martin and Altice International. 

Lemssouguer didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. But sources say Arini Capital Management is performing better than the recent coverage suggests. Over four years of existence, it's understood to have delivered net returns of 73%, with a Sharpe of around 1.3. The S&P 500 returned around 52% over the same period.

Arini has also been hiring. At its last set of accounts, filed for the year ending December 2024, Arini employed fewer than 50 people. Now it has 180, up 25% in 12 months. While other hedge funds churn through their staff, Arini is understood to have a high retention rate. Fewer than 10% of Arini's investment team members have left in the past five years, including both firings and voluntary departures. That's abnormally low.

This isn't to say that no one has left. Gavin Yates, the CEO of Arini in the US, is said to be going to Citadel to be a credit portfolio manager. Ben Elliot left in London, too. 

Nor is to say that times aren't tough - Arini owns hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Aston Martin's debt, and the value of that debt has plummeted following a controversial refinancing deal.   

Distressed debt investing can be a long game, though. Arini has been down before. In 2022, it lost 15% over a few months. In 2024, it lost 8% over two months. Then it gained 29% over the next 12 months. Patience. 

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