London's biggest new hedge fund employs 77 people and stopped hiring

If you wanted to work for Diego Megia, the ex-Citadel and Millennium portfolio manager who founded hedge fund Taula Capital in April this year, you may have missed your chance. 

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By March, Taula, which will have $6bn under management after raising $5bn for its launch and another $1bn before March next year, will be bigger than Jain Capital, this year's other big launch, in terms of assets under management. It will, however, have considerably fewer employees. 

Jain currently employs around 250 people. Taula, however, only has 77 employees, split equally between its investment and non-investment teams. It's understood that there are no plans to dramatically increase this in the near term and that the focus next year will instead be on generating returns. 

Taula's 77 people include 33 FCA registered people in London, many of whom moved across from Millennium (which seeded the fund with $3bn). Nine new people have been added globally since June. They include Michael Jun Xu, a macro portfolio manager from Balyasny, who joined in September in New York, along with Lucas Krishan, an economist from TD Securities, and Mark Danovich, a quant researcher with a PhD in the optoelectronics of two-dimensional materials. 

Taula's modest headcount suggests that if it succeeds in generating strong returns, it could pay very well indeed. It may need to. Its existing portfolio managers include Stefan Ericsson, who allegedly joined Milennium on a $50m package in 2022.

Even if Taula isn't hiring new experienced people, it will seemingly be hiring juniors. The fund is understood to have launched a graduate program which will be recruiting in 2025. 

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