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Lighthouse, which manages about $8.5 billion in assets,
currently has 110 investments in a wide range of hedge fund
strategies.
Hashemi is expected to start London-based Hashemi Asset
Management in the new year and will focus on European equities
as part of a so-called long-short strategy, one source said,
betting on both rising and falling share prices.
Hashemi, 32, joins a number of people to leave BlueCrest Capital
Management, the $8 billion hedge fund firm founded by
billionaire Mike Platt that announced it was closing to outside
investors in December 2015.
Citadel recently hired a team that once ran one-fifth of
BlueCrest's assets while another former portfolio manager,
Takashi Makita, is launching his own computer-driven hedge fund
firm.
Hashemi's new venture will receive $200 million from
Florida-based Lighthouse, a second source said, placing it among
the largest start-ups in Europe this year. A spokesman for
Lighthouse declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
Just 11 funds launched globally in 2016 manage a similar amount,
data from industry tracker Preqin showed.
At BlueCrest Hashemi had been an equities portfolio manager at
BlueCrest between April 2013 and September this year, a third
source said.
He also previously worked at Japanese investment bank Nomura and
hedge fund giant Millennium Capital Partners, the website of
British regulator the Financial Conduct Authority showed.
The launch comes amid lackluster returns at equities-focused
hedge funds, which have made gains of 3.71 percent on average in
the year to end-October, compared with losses of 0.97 percent in
2015 and gains of 1.81 percent in 2014, according to data from
Hedge Fund Research.
(Reporting by Maiya Keidan; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
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