Balyasny just cut 10 people running a $2 billion book. The hedge fund axed the one-year-old team because of poor performance, sources say

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Dmitry Balyasny’s hedge fund has cut its 10-person Synthesis team, which uses a mix of quant and fundamental stock-picking techniques and ran a $2 billion book of business, sources tell Business Insider.
Synthesis team leader Mike Daylamani is among the cuts – he joined Balyasny in 2018 after spending nearly a decade working for Steve Cohen.
Sources say the cuts are unrelated to a strategy revamp at the firm’s quant unit — which lost its head, Ulrich Brandt-Pollmann, last week.
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It’s only been about a year since Balyansy launched its Synthesis team, but it is already cutting the "quantamental" group, which combined quant and fundamental equity-picking strategies.

The group was run by Mike Daylamani, who was recruited from Steve Cohen’s Point72 last year to head the group. He had nine sector heads underneath him, all of whom were cut this week, sources tell Business Insider.

The sector heads were: Philson Yim; Ed Duggan; Jason Lee; Zach Schmidt; Ryan Molloy; Sudhir Sachdev; Dan Riff; Eugene Lipovetsky; and Andrew Schiffrin. All were recruited to Balyasny roughly a year ago from firms like Caxton Associates, Citadel, Luminus Management, Wellington, and Point72.

Sources say the team ran a $2 billion book of business, and the cuts come less than a week after word spread that Balyasny’s quant head, Ulrich Brandt-Pollmann, was leaving the $6 billion hedge fund amid a quant strategy revamp.

See more: Balyasny’s quant head is out as the $6 billion hedge fund undergoes a strategy revamp

The Synthesis line was not connected to the revamp to the quant strategy, sources close to the firm say, and the cuts were made because the group’s performance was poor.

The firm declined to comment. Daylamani could not be reached for comment.

Balyasny’s hedge fund has bounced back after a rough 2018, when the manager cut a fifth of its staff and Balyasny himself closed his long-running "Best Ideas" portfolio. The hedge fund is up 10.2% in 2019 through the end of July, and the firm has hired in other areas of the business, adding 14 new portfolio managers.

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