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With eyes on future growth, $14 billion hedge fund Schonfeld Strategic Advisors has expanded its C-suite.
Schonfeld CEO Ryan Tolkin has tapped Michael Grad, previously BlueCrest’s global head of business development, as the firm’s chief investment initiatives officer, according to an internal memo Tolkin sent to staff Monday, as seen by Business Insider.
The new role “will be integral in shaping how we scale our investment platform in the years to come,” Tolkin wrote in the memo.
“Michael will be responsible for leading our commercial strategy across investment growth and strategic partnerships,” the memo continued.
Grad recently left billionaire Michael Platt’s BlueCrest Capital, where he’d worked since 2017, scouting investment talent, Business Insider reported in June. Before that, he worked at Millennium as a senior investment officer.
He’ll start at Schonfeld in the first half of 2026 and report to Tolkin, the memo said.
Top multimanager hedge funds have been spending millions to hire top business development executives like Grad amid an intense battle for the industry’s most talented portfolio managers.
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Some BD execs have parlayed their expertise into even broader roles. Walleye Capital last year hired Matt Giannini, a long-time BD exec at Citadel, as the chief operating officer of its long-short equities business.
In his new role, Grad will help pinpoint potential areas to grow and partner with Schonfeld’s business development teams to target the right money managers, according to the memo.
Grad is the second recent addition to the firm’s leadership. Earlier this month, Schonfeld told employees that 27-year Goldman Sachs veteran Tracy Backofen will be the firm’s new global head of human capital management.
Backofen will start in September and take over the responsibilities of Jennifer Cohen, Schonfeld’s former HR head who joined Steve Cohen’s Point72.
After stratospheric growth early this decade, Schonfeld contracted in 2023 amid a run of poor performance and investor redemptions, briefly entertaining a tie-up with Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management. Tolkin has long harbored ambitions for Schonfeld to compete with the likes of Millennium and Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Schonfeld bounced back in 2024, beating rivals with a 19.7% return in its flagship Partners fund. That fund is up 6% this year through June.
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