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The 2016 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Pierre-Adrien Nicolas

Nicolas left Barclays to become CIO for EMEA at buzzed-about hedge fund start-up Squarepoint Capital.

    Pierre-Adrien Nicolas
    Squarepoint Capital

    These are not halcyon days for hedge funds, but as good investors know, that’s when the best opportunities come along. London-based Squarepoint Capital, in a highly anticipated launch, was spun out from Barclays at the end of 2014. Pierre-Adrien Nicolas, the firm’s CIO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is still just 32, but he already knows a thing or two about the fickleness of markets.

    尼古拉长大的我n Normandy, France, the son of a lawyer and a speech therapist. He studied mathematics and physics, receiving a master’s degree in applied math from France’s École Polytechnique before earning an MS in financial engineering at Columbia University in New York. Upon graduating from Columbia in 2007, he joined Lehman Brothers Holdings as a proprietary trader. In hindsight, the quant’s entry into finance could look like bad timing. Nicolas had planned to join Lehman Brothers in New York, but he was hired in London, where he became part of a quantitative trading business started at the bank by Olivier Durantel and Gregoire Schneider in 2000.

    The year after Nicolas arrived at Lehman, bad bets on U.S. subprime mortgages and a highly leveraged balance sheet forced it to declare bankruptcy in September. When Barclays bought the Wall Street firm out of Chapter 11, Nicolas and his colleagues found themselves doing proprietary trading for the British bank. Owing to regulatory changes in recent years, banks have been dismantling their prop trading businesses, so it was inevitable that nQuants, as the team was known, would have to spin out of Barclays or otherwise be disbanded. In 2014 news broke that nQuants was leaving. Nicolas was one of a team of about 65 that departed to launch Squarepoint, which began trading in early 2015.

    Visit the2016 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Ivy League Schools Pave the Wayfor more.

    Hedge Fund Rising Stars of 2016

    Jessye Ball
    Millennium Mgmt
    Sarah Berner
    Aristeia Capital
    Jenna Bussman-Wise
    AIG Investments
    莫林常
    Point72 Asset Mgmt
    Dennis Chenfu
    Pershing
    Charles Dufresne Jr.
    Sciens Capital Mgmt
    William Freda
    Graticule Asset Mgmt Asia
    Samantha Greenberg
    Margate Capital
    Mark Gurevich
    Ropes & Gray
    Tal Gurion
    Mariner Glen Oaks
    Craig Huie
    University of California
    Yusef Kassim
    Blue Harbour Group
    Florian Kronawitter
    White Square Capital
    Vikram Kumar
    TT International
    Brandon Levin
    Jana Partners
    Jonathan Levin
    George Weiss Associates
    Brett Minarik
    Aksia
    Ian Monroe
    Etho Capital
    Jason Morrow
    Utah Retirement Systems
    Pierre-Adrien Nicolas
    Squarepoint Capital
    Jamie Pabst
    Green Owl Capital Mgmt
    Parag Pande
    Blackstone Group
    Agata Praczuk
    MetLife
    Max Saffian
    Fortress Investment Group
    Matt Satnick
    MSD Partners
    Eric Singer
    Viex Capital Advisors
    Katina Stefanova
    Marto Capital
    Reginald Tucker
    New York State Common Retirement Fund
    Michael Wang
    Cypress Funds
    Sean Wygovsky
    Polar Asset Mgmt Partners

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