London hedge fund paying £248k kept hiring as revenues fell
Tim Tacchi’s hedge fund, TT International, pays less than it used to. Average compensation per head at the firm's primary entity, TT International Asset Management LTD, fell from £298k in 2021 to £289k in 2022 to £264k in 2023. The situation did not get better in 2024.
TT International is a long/short hedge fund with $5.3bn in assets under management - a number that has steadily declined from $8.4bn since its 2020 acquisition by SMBC, which it blamed on client outflows. It employs over 100 people, with offices in London, Hong Kong, and New York.
Accounts were released last week for both TT International Asset Management LTD and TT International Investment Management LLP for 2024. The “LTD” is a limited company owning the hedge fund (and in turn owned by SMBC) and the “LLP” is a legal partnership that employs, among others, TT’s portfolio managers.
TT International's apparent travails might be taken as symptomatic of the issues facing London's smaller hedge funds. Revenue across the group fell from £45m in 2023 to £35m in 2024, a 24% fall, and gross profit in turn declined from £42m to £29m across the same periods, a 32% fall. The group’s net loss across the two periods went from £4.6m to £8.6m – doubling.
Pay fell as a consequence. From £274k ($369k) per head in 2023, it declined to £249k ($336k) per head in 2024, a decrease of nearly 10%.
Curiously, though, TT's headcount across the mian LTD entity went from 105 to 109 between 2024 and 2023. At the partnership, which primarily exists to pay portfolio managers, employees went from 83 to 91. The hiring was targeted: the recruitment budget increased significantly: from £313k in 2023 to £633k in 2024. New hires included Michael Lam, a senior trader who joined the firm from Jupiter Asset Management, where he was a fixed income trader.
TT International did not respond to a request for comment.
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