HF in EMEA

I am starting as an analyst at an EB in Madrid in September, and I would love to end up in a HF. I was a student athlete in the US and I know how the process works there (2 year analysts, then associate etc) but I have seen that in Europe (specially EMEA) people stay 3+ years as analysts and usually stay longer in IB as well as progress slower.

Since my goal is to end up in a HF and there are much scarcer here in Europe (and most of the European ones are in London) I was wondering if I should go for research analyst positions or if IB is good, and I was also wondering how many years of IB would be reasonable to have a good change to break into a HF, as well as any other things that could help about the process (like when does recruiting starts, how important is CFA/MBA etc..) Thanks!

27 Comments
 

Assuming L/S, most of the opportunities are the pod shops. You don’t really have a big L/S scene in london outside of them. 1-2 years of IB is fine, you need actionable stock pitches (I.e make $ in a few weeks/months) rather than specific experience  

 

That’s what I assumed lol thanks. So obv if I am per say in oil & gas IB and trying to get into oil & gas HF, I would want to study their strategy and pitch a stock that would make sense for their pod shop, and then try to get in? These shops only have a few employees and it seems to me that getting the interview would probably be the hardest part of the process, what would you recommend for that? Thanks!

 
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From your comment I don’t think you know what a pod shop is. These are multimanager hedge funds and you dont really pitch a stock “for the fund”. The fund has numerous PMs running a team (hence the term pod) and they all run their businesses the way they see fit. The larger fund acts as a platform by giving them resources and capital to deploy alongside risk limits, but they don’t really answer to the fund. Hence when you’re hired, you’re not really working at Citadel, you’re working for a specific PM at citadel. 
 

Pods are sector specific, generally it’s not advisable to pitch a stock in their coverage because they will know more than you on the name. Multimanager hedge funds are not small companies either, there will be hundreds if not thousands employed at them and they are constantly firing and hiring so getting looks should be pretty easy.

Normally a recruiter will reach out to you after a year or so in IB. The risk in this career is very real, if your team loses 4% or so of capital you will be fired, average tenure is usually a couple of years. As a junior you usually get a few chances to hop around funds, but if you’re not cut out this industry, or 100% dedicated to the markets being your life for the next few years, you will churn out. 

 

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