Reuters – Hedge fund firm Citadel Investment Group said on Tuesday it had hired two senior sales executives from Merrill Lynch, the investment bank that is being sold to Bank of America for $50 billion.
Chicago-based Citadel, which manages around $18 billion in assets, said in a note that Tobias Gehrke and Anita Nassar had been hired to lead Citadel’s capital development efforts in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Nassar worked as head of central banks and sovereign wealth funds at Merrill, while Gehrke led the government institutions group for the firm’s equities and alternatives businesses. A growing number of professionals have been leaving investment banks for hedge funds, which are increasingly seen as a safer option, since the credit crisis began last summer.
