Millennium is an institution.
The hedge fund, with $81 billion in assets, has been around for a while. In a 2024 letter to investors, billionaire founder Izzy Englander said the firm “is far too large and intricate for a single individual to manage.”
A onetime potential successor to Englander — Jain Global founder Bobby Jain — was replaced by a four-person office of the CIO. The firm has CEOs for its EMEA and APAC businesses. There is no key-man clause for investors in the firm, meaning backers cannot pull their capital when Englander retires or leaves — a sign limited partners are investing in the firm first and foremost, not Englander.
Millennium is much larger than just Englander, and has been for some time. But the sale of a 15% stake at the start of November, which valued the manager at $14 billion, is still a milestone for the 36-year-old fund. Even in an industry that has matured in recent years, it remains rare for hedge-fund founders to sell a part of their business.
Longtime investors in the firm’s fund now own a part of the business. Private banks such as Goldman Sachs and UBS pitched wealthy individuals on a chance to snag a slice of one of the most successful hedge funds in history. Senior executives were given a chance to buy into the partnership for the first time in the firm’s history, a person close to the manager said.
Now, the question is what comes next for the hedge fund industry’s biggest employer. How big can the firm get? What asset classes and geographies will it expand into next? And who will take over for Englander when he calls it quits?
$120 billion on the horizon?
Millennium has quadrupled its assets in the past 10 years, but unlike peers such as Citadel, Point72, and D.E. Shaw, which have returned money to investors recently, the New York-based firm has continued to fundraise.
Last year, the firm raised $10 billion in a private equity-style drawdown fund, which would only call on investor capital if it found opportunities.
One pitch to a group of wealthy clients included a chart projecting the firm’s growth to $120 billion in assets over the next five years, along with the subsequent revenue the firm would generate as it expanded, according to a private banker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak to the media. (Millennium’s own marketing presentation to private wealth platforms and longtime LPs did not include any fundraising goal).
The firm, which states on its website that it has more than 330 investing teams and 6,400 people total, has been able to lock in capital for longer and longer durations. A five-year lockup is now typical for new cash coming into Millennium.
This long-term capital gives the firm the ability to build into new areas that might not generate returns right away.
Private markets, offices abroad
One place the firm is intent on expanding into is the lucrative private markets. Bloomberg reported last month that the firm expects to raise up to $5 billion in its first fund that will focus on investments such as real estate and asset-backed debt.
As assets have swelled across the multistrategy sector, managers like Millennium have had to get creative about where to put their growing pile of assets. Longtime focuses like relative value strategies, long-short equity, and quantitative bets will still be a big part of the firm, but as those areas become more crowded, the firm has branched out.
It split its fixed income and commodities unit into separate units in late 2023, as it has sought to become a larger player in the commodities space. While the firm has yet to match the profits generated in that space by rival Citadel, it’s an area where Millennium plans to keep adding talent and assets.
The firm also now has more than 140 offices globally, with a majority of these locations housing investment staff. Millennium’s Middle East buildout is well-known — it’s the biggest Western player in Dubai by head count, with close to 150 people and space for 100 more — but they are also adding teams across Europe and Asia to continue to diversify. The firm just poached Schonfeld’s head of EMEA fundamental equity business development, Sameer Buch, to join its team of internal recruiters, a person familiar with the move told Business Insider.
And Millennium has been, by far, the most prominent backer of externally run funds among its multistrategy cohorts, funding dozens of separately managed accounts worldwide.
Despite the increased attention to money managers outside the firm’s walls, Millennium’s hiring of internal talent is not slowing. As Business Insider previously reported, the company hired about 160 portfolio managers in 2024 — roughly three a week.
Who will fill Izzy’s shoes?
Englander, by all accounts, is not expected to go anywhere anytime soon.
But the 77-year-old billionaire has built up his bench with plenty of former Goldman Sachs executives when he’s ready to step down. All four members of his office of the CIO — Justin Gmelich, Scott Rofey, Paul Russo, and Jeff Verschleiser — were partners at the revered investment bank.
Englander’s right-hand man, former Barclays and Lehman Brothers executive Ajay Nagpal, added President to his title alongside COO in late 2022, when the office of the CIO was also created.
Any new investor or partner in the firm who is concerned about Millennium changing drastically when Englander eventually departs shouldn’t worry.
As the billionaire wrote in 2023 to investors, the management structure helming the ship looks after “the wider interests of the organization and, crucially, the interests of you, our investors.”
“I think of these management layers as extensions of myself,” he wrote.
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