Reuters UK - Balyasny Asset Management LP recruited more than 30 money managers and analysts from competing hedge funds in the first eight months of the year, exceeding its total for all of 2007.

“We have been aggressively looking for talent, and in a year like this, there are a lot more candidates out there,” said Barry Colvin, vice chairman of the Chicago-based firm, which oversees $2.5 billion. Hires came from New York-based Satellite Asset Management LP and Magnetar Capital LLC in Chicago, which have both lost money this year.

While more than 200 hedge funds shut down this year, Balyasny, SAC Capital Advisors LLC and Citadel Investment Group LLC are taking advantage of the industry’s worst performance in a decade to go on a hiring spree. Hedge funds, diminished by a scarcity of credit and enfeebled stock markets, fell by an average 4.7 percent as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. in Chicago.

Sixty-one percent of the 2,795 funds managing more than $100 million that are in New York-based HedgeFund.net’s database are losing money in 2008.

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