Why this $6 billion investment firm is diving into the hedge fund talent wars

• $6 billion New Holland Capital has started a new unit to recruit internal investment staff.
• The firm had previously invested in external funds in a structure similar to a fund-of-funds.
• Former North Rock Capital COO Omar Qaiser was hired to lead the new platform named Plum Island.

The competition for top investing talent is higher than ever.

Megafunds like Izzy Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, and Steve Cohen's Point72 offer moneymakers tens of millions in potential payouts and top-tier perks. Up-and-coming funds and new launches such as Verition, Walleye, and Jain Global are constantly scouring the landscape for investors. Explosive growth in private market assets means PE funds and new private credit firms need head count.

In short, it's a labor market that favors the employee, not the employer. Englander himself called it a "talent bubble" in 2023.

Despite this dynamic, $6 billion New York-based New Holland Capital is expanding from its traditional, fund-of-funds structure with a new unit focused on bringing investment talent in-house. Plum Island Partners, named after a small spit of land off Long Island discovered by Dutch explorers in the 17th century, will be run by Omar Qaiser, according to a note sent to clients seen by Business Insider. Qaiser is the former COO of investment platform North Rock Capital.

"While the majority of our platform will continue to be composed of external teams, we've now established Plum Island Partners to serve as New Holland's internal trading and operations arm," the note reads.

"While our focus on niche, capacity-constrained strategies will not change, this evolution allows us to expand the universe of potential PMs to include those who have no interest in running a business," the note adds.

When it comes to potential payouts, small platforms cannot compete with firms like Millennium and Citadel. But there are investment strategies that can only manage a certain amount of money — say $100 million — that are not of interest to the biggest players because the potential returns are too marginal to make a difference, several smaller platforms have said.

Some tenured investors are also looking for more customized risk parameters, which the largest funds struggle to offer given their organizations' size.

It's why places like New Holland, among other smaller funds, have decided to bring more talent in-house even as bigger firms like Millennium increasingly allocate to external managers.

"We're trying to be indifferent — we want to find good talent and have a home for them," said New Holland CEO Scott Radke, who noted that he still expects most of the firm's investors to be external.

He said the manager has more than 40 external managers right now, while Plum Island has one internal PM, an equity capital markets investor. The new unit expects to add several more this year, but has no set goal.

New Holland began as an investment advisor for Dutch pension plans and has since become independent. Last month, it hired former Brevan Howard executive Stephan Brohme as its chief risk officer.