Citadel, the hedge fund manager founded by Ken Griffin, is to shed 100-200 IT staff, according to a report by Reuters.
Chicago-based Citadel, which has about $12 billion under management, is understood to have employed 550 IT workers prior to the reduction, or nearly half of its total workforce.
Citadel, a multi-strategy hedge fund, uses IT staff to develop and maintain software programmes used by various trading desks. But the Reuters report suggests the firm has now concluded it can simply buy in from vendors much of what it needs.
The staff reduction, which was on a “voluntary separation basis,” was made on a global basis, according to the report, and was unrelated to fund performance.
Citadel’s flagship Kensington fund, which has about $9 billion under management, is up about 6 percent year to date.