In one of the worst years in recent history for money raising, the multimanager platforms pulled in the lion’s share of capital. Millennium raised $3.8 billion in 2015, or almost one-tenth of the net inflows for the entire industry. It stopped taking cash at the end of the year while it looks to add to the 180 teams it already has, according to people familiar with the firm.

Paloma Partners, run by Donald Sussman, is also planning on adding employees after almost doubling in size, with assets jumping to more than $4 billion today, from $2.3 billion in January 2015, according to a person familiar with the firm.


Surveyor Unit


Even as the multi-manager platforms add to their employee ranks, they tend to cull those who lose money or can’t scale their investments. Griffin’s Citadel, with teams that manage money across credit, stocks, fixed income, macro, commodities and quantitative strategies, recently fired about 15 investment professionals from one of its equity units after the firm lost 6.5 percent in its main hedge funds in the first six weeks of the year. The unit, called Surveyor, has about 200 employees across 27 teams.

Citadel still plans to build a second Surveyor unit this year, said a person familiar with the firm. Citadel’s Global Equities fund, which is also composed of multiple teams, ranked 15th in Bloomberg’s ranking with a return of 17.2 percent. Its main multistrategy fund is tied for 31st place in the ranking. The firm has a third fund that made the cut, the $3.5 billion Citadel Tactical Trading, which relies on the Surveyor and Global Equities units.

Visium, which manages $8 billion, also expects that its headcount will rise in 2016 in its New York, London and San Francisco offices even as it cuts managers who have been overseeing portfolios of $50 million to $100 million and consolidates its capital around traders who can run $200 million to $500 million, said people familiar with the firm’s plans.


Crestline’s Hires


Other firms are jumping on the multimanager bandwagon. Fort Worth, Texas-based Crestline Investors, which farms out about $2 billion of client money to hedge funds, is committing $250 million to start its own market-neutral stock fund run by several teams. The unit will initially receive about 20 percent of Crestline’s portfolio allocation, and the firm eventually plans on raising external money for the fund, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Crestline made its first hires in May and expects to have nine teams of two or more people by March 1.

Officials for the firms declined to comment on their expansion plans.

While the multimanager approach generally worked well in 2015, these groups haven’t all managed to dodge the volatile markets of 2016. Billionaire Steve Cohen’s family office, which gained 15.5 percent last year, lost 8 percent this year through early February. That’s one of the worst money-losing periods for Cohen’s $11 billion firm since he founded its predecessor, SAC Capital Advisors, in 1992. Since Cohen stopped managing outside capital as part of a deal with the government to settle insider- trading claims at SAC, he has been hiring less-seasoned investment professionals.