Carmignac Gestion Hires Former SAC Investing Team in London

LONDON â€" A group of former employees at the SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund in London has found a new home.

Carmignac Gestion Group, the European asset management company, has hired a four-man European equities team headed by Muhammed Yesilhark, who joined SAC Capital in 2009.

The team will manage three European funds for Carmignac with about 1.6 billion euros, or about $2.2 billion, in assets under management.

“We’re bringing on board a talented team under Muhammed Yesilhark’s leadership to underscore our commitment to generate strong investment performance in European equities,” said Édouard Carmignac, the company’s founder and chairman. “Their experience in long-short management will help us to perform in all market conditions and will complement our risk management.”

Joining Mr. Yesilhark are Malte Heininger, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley; and the former SAC analysts Huseyin Yasar and Saiyid Hamid.

Mr. Yesilhark will run the Carmignac Grande Europe fund and the long-short Carmignac Euro-Patrimoine fund. He will co-manage the Carmignac Euro-Entrepreneurs fund with Mr. Heininger, who worked with him at SAC for the past three years.

SAC shuttered its London operations last year as it faced pressure from a government insider-trading investigation in the United States.

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, has said that insider trading at SAC was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds.”

Six former employees have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and Michael S. Steinberg, one of the firm’s highest-ranking employees to be charged in the investigation, was convicted of five counts of securities fraud in December.

Jury selection began in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday in the trial of Mathew Martoma, a former SAC portfolio manager accused of using inside information about a clinical drug trial to help the firm avoid losses and generate profits totaling $276 million.

The firm itself pleaded guilty to insider trading in November and agreed to pay a $1.2 billion penalty. As part of the plea, SAC also agreed to stop managing money for outside investors.

Despite the plea, SAC said at the time that it “never encouraged, promoted or tolerated insider trading,” but was taking responsibility for “a handful of men who pleaded guilty and whose conduct gave rise to SAC’s liability.”

The hedge fund closed its London office, formerly its largest outside its Stamford, Conn., headquarters, and has cut jobs as it becomes a so-called family office that will primarily manage the money of Steven A. Cohen, the firm’s founder.

A number of traders and analysts have also left for other companies as SAC has shrunk its operations.

Mr. Cohen, who has denied wrongdoing, is facing a civil administrative proceeding filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has accused him of failing to properly supervise employees.