Former Deutsche traders launch hedge fund

Two former Deutsche Bank traders have launched a New York-based hedge fund, becoming the latest in a string of former investment bank employees to enter the business.

Mark Tanaka and David Hammond, who were co-heads of the bank’s convertible bond desk until July, have created Sanno Point Capital Management, a multi-strategy fund. They hope to launch with around $250 million early next year and, ambitiously, aim to reach the $2-3 billion mark within three years.

“Our decision to leave Deutsche was very much related to the operating restrictions within the bank,” said Tanaka. “There aren’t many sell-side desks that have a wide enough mandate to take advantage of all the strategies that a hedge fund can. And as new strategies evolve, they tend to be cross-business or cross-asset class, which definitely makes it harder for someone on the sell-side to take advantage,” said Hammond.

The pair are keen to stress their brand of multi-strategy. “The mainstream multi-strategy you see might be very similar to the investment banking model, where you have someone at the top allocating between different strategies. But you don’t have someone looking across the different strategies and actually connecting them up, using exotic instruments or newly liquid markets. We think the real value is where you’ve got the portfolio manager who’s actually acting as the cross-strategy producer position-taker,” said Tanaka.