2024-08-15 Citadel’s Ken Griffin Has Remade the Hedge-Fund Industry, With Himself on Top
Ken Griffin wants visitors to the offices of his $63 billion hedge-fund firm, Citadel, to have no doubt about its standing atop Wall Street.Ken
Griffin 希望来访者在参观他那价值 630 亿美元的对冲基金公司 Citadel 的办公室时，对其在华尔街的顶尖地位毫不怀疑。
“#1 Most Profitable Hedge Fund Manager of All Time” reads the message emblazoned on elevator doors at its Miami headquarters.
“史上最赚钱的对冲基金经理”这条信息被印在其迈阿密总部的电梯门上。
It refers to an unofficial industry ranking Citadel scaled following a one-year record haul of $16 billion in 2022. Griffin is eager to tell the world about that, too.
它指的是 Citadel 在 2022 年创下 160 亿美元的一年记录后攀升的非官方行业排名。Griffin 也渴望向世界宣告这一点。
“We made more money than any firm has ever made in the history of capital markets,” Griffin said of Citadel and a sister company, Citadel Securities. “This is where people come when they want to change the world of finance.”
“我们赚的钱比资本市场历史上任何公司赚的钱都多，”Griffin 谈到 Citadel 和一家姊妹公司 Citadel Securities 时说。“这是人们想要改变金融世界时会来的地方。”
For all of Griffin’s swagger, Citadel’s performance is helping win a war of styles in its corner of professional investing. Griffin took an industry long dominated by singular traders like George Soros and David Tepper and atomized it, employing scores of teams that semiautonomously manage their own portfolios.
尽管 Griffin 表现得很自信，Citadel 的表现正在帮助其在专业投资领域赢得一场风格之战。Griffin 将一个长期由像 George Soros 和 David Tepper 这样的单一交易员主导的行业进行了分解，雇佣了大量团队半自主地管理他们自己的投资组合。
Last year the firm’s flagship fund was up 15.3%, outpacing the 7.4% gain in a broad hedge-fund industry index. It’s a big comeback from the firm’s near-failure in the 2008-09 financial crisis.
去年，该公司的旗舰基金上涨了 15.3%，超过了对冲基金行业广泛指数的 7.4%涨幅。这是该公司在 2008-09 年金融危机中几乎失败后的重大反弹。
Now more diffuse investing factories like Citadel are ascendant. Citadel and a few dozen other similarly structured hedge-fund firms hold about 9% of industry assets—but they account for more than a quarter of hedge-fund jobs and about 30% of the industry’s U.S. stock-market footprint, according to Goldman Sachs.
如今，像 Citadel 这样的分散投资工厂正在崛起。根据 Goldman Sachs 的数据，Citadel 和其他几十家结构类似的对冲基金公司持有约 9%的行业资产，但它们占据了超过四分之一的对冲基金工作岗位和约 30%的行业美国股市份额。
Griffin, 55 years old, is known inside Citadel as an intense, demanding boss whose blue-eyed stare is a source of discomfort for employees. He is obsessed with guarding against complacency and said in a recent investor letter he wants to “create the most formidable team in the history of hedge funds.”
55 岁的 Griffin 在 Citadel 内部被认为是一个紧张、苛求的老板，他那蓝眼睛的凝视让员工感到不安。他对防止自满情有独钟，并在最近的一封投资者信中表示，他希望“打造对冲基金历史上最强大的团队。”
With a fortune Bloomberg estimates at about $42 billion, he’s brought a similar intensity to his life outside the office. He has donated about $75 million to conservative causes and Republican candidates for this year’s elections, recently putting him second on the list of individuals who have disclosed spending this election cycle, behind banking heir Tim Mellon, according to OpenSecrets data.
根据彭博社估计，他的财富约为 420 亿美元，他在办公室外的生活中也带来了类似的强度。他为今年的选举捐赠了约 7500 万美元给保守派事业和共和党候选人，根据 OpenSecrets 的数据，最近使他在本选举周期披露支出的个人名单中排名第二，仅次于银行继承人 Tim Mellon。
Griffin has given hundreds of millions dollars to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and his alma mater, Harvard University, though said he was pausing his donations to the school over its handling of antisemitism on campus. (He’s called activist students at elite universities “whiny snowflakes.”) After his tax returns leaked to the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, he took the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department to court, eventually securing an apology from the government.
格里芬已向 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 和他的母校哈佛大学捐赠了数亿美元，不过他说由于学校对校园反犹太主义的处理，他暂停了对学校的捐赠。（他称精英大学的激进学生为“爱抱怨的小雪花。”）在他的纳税申报表泄露给非营利新闻机构 ProPublica 后，他将美国国税局和财政部告上法庭，最终获得了政府的道歉。
His own property portfolio includes the most expensive home ever purchased in the U.S. and a historic Miami house built for presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan. He plans to build one of the largest skyscrapers in New York as well as one of the largest skyscrapers in Miami to house the expanding ranks of employees at his hedge-fund and trading empire, which now number more than 4,600. He moved Citadel’s home base out of Chicago in 2022 following a spat with Illinois’s governor over violent crime.
他自己的房产组合包括美国有史以来购买的最昂贵的住宅和一座为总统候选人威廉·詹宁斯·布莱恩建造的历史悠久的迈阿密房屋。他计划在纽约建造一座最大的摩天大楼之一，以及在迈阿密建造一座最大的摩天大楼之一，以容纳他对冲基金和交易帝国中不断扩大的员工队伍，目前员工人数已超过 4,600 人。2022 年，他在与伊利诺伊州州长就暴力犯罪问题发生争执后，将 Citadel 的总部从芝加哥迁出。
作死的方式。
Griffin spends weeks around the end of the year personally reviewing the impact that thousands of employees have had on the firm. He pop-quizzes his stock pickers about their views. Before getting a job offer, prospective hires must go through a lengthy professional assessment process, with questions going back to their childhood goals and accomplishments.
格里芬花费数周时间在年底亲自审查数千名员工对公司的影响。他随机询问股票挑选者对市场的看法。在获得工作机会之前，潜在的雇员必须经过一个漫长的专业评估过程，问题甚至追溯到他们的童年目标和成就。
He said the firm’s losses in the financial crisis aren’t much of a conversation topic with investors anymore, adding with a note of triumph: “History is written by the winners.”
他说，该公司在金融危机中的损失不再是投资者谈论的话题，并带着胜利的语气补充道：“历史是由胜利者书写的。”
Just as he likes talking up his wins, he relishes dunking on his doubters. He still remembers the name of a competing hedge fund that bet against Citadel’s bonds in 2008—and how it sold for a low price after its business shriveled. He recently told a podcast interviewer about a banker he knew who ribbed him for overreaching when Citadel hired a rocket scientist in its early days.
正如他喜欢谈论自己的胜利一样，他也喜欢嘲讽那些怀疑他的人。他仍然记得 2008 年一家竞争对手对冲基金的名字，该基金曾押注 Citadel 的债券——以及在其业务萎缩后以低价出售的情况。他最近在接受播客采访时谈到了一位他认识的银行家，这位银行家曾在 Citadel 早期聘请火箭科学家时嘲笑他过于自信。
“Now jump forward 30-some years, that bank he worked for is no longer in business, and Citadel and Citadel Securities are two of the most important firms in the world, in the financial markets,” Griffin said.“
现在快进三十多年，他曾经工作的那家银行已经不再营业，而 Citadel 和 Citadel Securities 是世界上金融市场中最重要的两家公司之一，”Griffin 说。
This story is based on conversations with more than two dozen people familiar with Griffin and Citadel’s business.
这篇报道基于与二十多位熟悉 Griffin 和 Citadel 业务的人士的对话。
Gains and losses 收益和损失
Growing up in Florida, Griffin played on a high-school soccer team that finished second in the state, learned to code and founded a mail-order education-software business as a teenager. He studied economics at Harvard and traded bonds from his dorm room.
在佛罗里达州长大的格里芬曾在一支高中足球队踢球，该队在全州比赛中获得第二名，他学会了编程，并在青少年时期创办了一家邮购教育软件公司。他在哈佛大学学习经济学，并在宿舍里进行债券交易。
He launched Citadel in Chicago in 1990. The archetypal hedge funds then were run by founders who often put their names on the door and had final say over what the fund buys or sells. Such single-manager firms usually focused on one investment strategy or asset class. Griffin was more expansionist.
他于 1990 年在芝加哥创立了 Citadel。当时的典型对冲基金通常由创始人经营，他们经常将自己的名字挂在门上，并对基金的买卖决策拥有最终决定权。这种单一管理者的公司通常专注于一种投资策略或资产类别。Griffin 则更具扩张性。
From Citadel’s roots in convertible bonds, Griffin branched out into statistical arbitrage, a kind of quantitative trading, in 1994; stock-picking in 2001 and commodities investing in 2002. Many of the firm’s strategies were designed to be market neutral—balancing bets that some assets will rise with bets that others will fall.
从 Citadel 在可转换债券的根基开始，Griffin 于 1994 年扩展到统计套利，这是一种量化交易；2001 年进入选股，2002 年进入商品投资。公司的许多策略旨在实现市场中性——平衡对某些资产上涨的押注与对其他资产下跌的押注。
市场中性的本质是不知道对错。
After a losing period in stocks around 2006, Griffin and his team made changes to distill stock pickers’ skills. From then on, each portfolio needed a mix of investments in companies of different sizes, growth profiles, momenta and other underlying factors. The goal was a book high in “idiosyncratic risk.”
在 2006 年左右股票亏损期后，Griffin 和他的团队进行了调整，以提炼选股者的技能。从那时起，每个投资组合都需要混合投资于不同规模、增长特征、动量和其他基本因素的公司。目标是一本具有高“特异性风险”的投资组合。
“How do you know if you’re lucky or smart when you had a good year?” said Oliver Weisberg, a former Citadel executive who now runs Blue Pool Capital. “Ken wants you to make money, but Ken wants to ensure that he knows who has repeatable investment talent.”
“当你有一个好年头时，你怎么知道自己是幸运还是聪明？”前 Citadel 高管、现任 Blue Pool Capital 负责人的 Oliver Weisberg 说。“Ken 希望你赚钱，但 Ken 希望确保他知道谁拥有可重复的投资才能。”
Griffin would move his desk around to be near divisions that were starting up or undergoing problems. When Citadel needed a new database to track its positions and transactions, Griffin bought a book on the subject and programmed it himself.
格里芬会移动他的办公桌，以便靠近那些刚刚起步或正在经历问题的部门。当 Citadel 需要一个新的数据库来跟踪其头寸和交易时，格里芬买了一本关于该主题的书，并亲自编程。
The 2008-09 financial crisis temporarily clipped Griffin’s wings. Its big funds recorded losses of 55%, nearly torpedoing the firm. It took until 2012 to make back the losses.
2008-09 年的金融危机暂时削弱了 Griffin 的实力。其大型基金录得 55%的亏损，几乎使公司遭受重创。直到 2012 年才弥补了这些损失。
Citadel started to look less like a traditional hedge fund and more like a nesting doll of mini-hedge funds. Griffin opened additional stock-picking units, each composed of separate teams that were dedicated to certain sectors and managed their own positions.
Citadel 开始看起来不像传统的对冲基金，更像是一个迷你对冲基金的套娃。Griffin 开设了额外的选股单元，每个单元由专门负责某些行业的独立团队组成，并管理自己的头寸。
Overlaid on top of individual teams’ portfolios is a sizable “center book” that both offsets concentrated positions and adds to high-potential trades. Managers of the center book might sell stocks to which multiple Citadel teams have exposure as a hedge, or augment bets taken by teams that it has determined are likely to do well, usually without their knowledge.
在各个团队的投资组合之上，还有一个相当大的“中心账本”，它既可以抵消集中的头寸，也可以增加高潜力的交易。中心账本的管理者可能会出售多个 Citadel 团队持有的股票作为对冲，或者增加那些被认为可能表现良好的团队的赌注，通常是在这些团队不知情的情况下进行。
The most-profitable hedge-fund list caught Griffin’s attention when Citadel was ranked fifth in 2017. He made it a firmwide goal to climb the rankings.
2017 年，当 Citadel 在最赚钱的对冲基金名单中排名第五时，这引起了 Griffin 的注意。他将提升排名作为全公司的目标。
By 2018, “multimanager” firms were growing faster than the rest of the industry and starting to account for its biggest launches. By then, Citadel had more demand from investors than capacity, prompting it to stop actively raising new capital and start returning excess profits every year.
到 2018 年，“多经理”公司增长速度超过了行业的其他部分，并开始占据行业最大的新基金发行。到那时，Citadel 从投资者那里获得的需求超过了其容量，促使其停止积极筹集新资本，并开始每年返还多余的利润。
After one such giveback in early 2020, Griffin lamented to hundreds of Citadel employees gathered at Chicago’s JW Marriott hotel that they couldn’t find enough opportunities to put that money to work.
在 2020 年初的一次回馈活动后，Griffin 向聚集在芝加哥 JW 万豪酒店的数百名 Citadel 员工感叹，他们找不到足够的机会来运用这些资金。
The pandemic’s early weeks demonstrated the appeal of multimanager hedge funds to investors. When a global stock-market index tanked by 20% in February and March 2020, hedge funds collectively lost 7.3%, while multimanager firms were down less than 1%, according to Goldman Sachs.
疫情初期向投资者展示了多经理对冲基金的吸引力。根据 Goldman Sachs 的数据，2020 年 2 月和 3 月全球股市指数暴跌 20%时，对冲基金整体损失 7.3%，而多经理公司仅下跌不到 1%。
Citadel’s flagship fund ended the year up 24.5%.
Citadel 的旗舰基金年终上涨了 24.5%。
Griffin credits Citadel’s relatively early return to the office for its pandemic-era performance. “It set up one of the greatest moments ever in the history of finance, getting to compete with people wearing their pajamas,” Griffin quipped.
格里芬将 Citadel 相对较早返回办公室归功于其疫情时期的表现。“这创造了金融史上最伟大的时刻之一，与穿着睡衣的人竞争，”格里芬打趣道。
Crates of bananas 香蕉箱
The meme-stock craze of 2021 broadened Griffin’s name recognition far beyond Wall Street—and made him an enemy among masses of individual investors.
2021 年的迷因股热潮让 Griffin 的知名度远超华尔街，并使他成为众多个人投资者的敌人。
好和坏都是自我选择，并使自己永存。
In January 2021, Citadel and its partners gave Melvin Capital a $2 billion lifeline after the hedge fund was caught in a short squeeze when GameStop’s stock rocketed. That drew the attention of Reddit-reading individual investors who wanted to punish short sellers.
2021 年 1 月，Citadel 及其合作伙伴向 Melvin Capital 提供了 20 亿美元的救命资金，此前该对冲基金在 GameStop 股票飙升时遭遇了逼空。这引起了阅读 Reddit 的个人投资者的注意，他们想要惩罚卖空者。
When trading app Robinhood restricted trading in GameStop and other meme stocks later that month, unfounded theories spread on social media that it was because of pressure from Citadel Securities, the trading firm also owned by Griffin that executed Robinhood customer orders.
当交易应用程序 Robinhood 在当月晚些时候限制 GameStop 和其他迷因股票的交易时，社交媒体上散布了毫无根据的理论，称这是因为来自 Griffin 同样拥有的交易公司 Citadel Securities 的压力，该公司执行了 Robinhood 客户的订单。
Congress later called Griffin to testify about his firms’ role in the saga. Self-described “apes” who were fans of movie-theater chain AMC mailed crates of bananas to Citadel’s offices. Griffin’s cellphone number leaked online and irate callers demanded to know why he had limited trading on Robinhood.
后来，国会传唤 Griffin 就他的公司在这场事件中的角色作证。自称为电影连锁影院 AMC 粉丝的“猿人”向 Citadel 的办公室邮寄了箱装香蕉。Griffin 的手机号码在网上泄露，愤怒的来电者要求知道他为何限制 Robinhood 的交易。
At work, he fixates on quotidian issues, like trade-processing errors, even if they don’t matter much to the firm’s profitability. “Once a firm makes it clear they tolerate complacency anywhere, it’s pretty easy for it to spread everywhere,” he said.
在工作中，他专注于日常问题，比如交易处理错误，即使这些问题对公司的盈利能力影响不大。他说：“一旦公司明确表示在任何地方容忍自满情绪，这种情绪就很容易蔓延到各处。”
Griffin has recruited other executives to Citadel that share his drive. Joanna Welsh, a champion powerlifter, joined in 2017 as head of risk. Pablo Salame, a former teenage tennis standout from Ecuador who rose to the top of the executive ranks at Goldman’s trading division, now serves as Citadel’s co-chief investment officer.
Griffin 招募了其他与他有相同动力的高管加入 Citadel。Joanna Welsh，一位举重冠军，于 2017 年加入，担任风险主管。Pablo Salame，一位来自厄瓜多尔的前青少年网球明星，曾在高盛的交易部门晋升至高管行列的顶端，现在担任 Citadel 的联席首席投资官。
“We hire people who are winners in life,” Griffin said. “Winners in finance is often not enough.”
“我们雇佣那些在人生中是赢家的人，”Griffin 说。“在金融领域的赢家往往还不够。”
Portfolio managers that otherwise would have opened their own funds have increasingly accepted offers from Citadel and its peers to run their own teams inside its walls. Bidding wars flared up industrywide for even middling traders, with pay packages that can run into the tens of millions of dollars.
本来会开设自己基金的投资组合经理越来越多地接受了 Citadel 及其同行的邀请，在其内部管理自己的团队。即使是中等水平的交易员，整个行业也爆发了竞价战，薪酬方案可以达到数千万美元。
Leaving can be harder. Citadel employees who want to go to a competitor are subject to lengthy noncompete clauses, as is standard for the industry. Citadel was also among the first hedge funds to subject workers to non-association agreements that restrict them from working at firms to which their former team members decamped.
离开可能更难。想要去竞争对手公司的 Citadel 员工需遵守长时间的竞业禁止条款，这在行业中是标准做法。Citadel 也是首批要求员工签署非关联协议的对冲基金之一，该协议限制他们在前团队成员离职后去的公司工作。
Best year ever 有史以来最好的一年
Recent years have been good to Citadel. In 2022, the hedge-fund industry reeled after the Fed started raising interest rates to tame inflation. Funds with heavy holdings of high-growth stocks and tech startups fared particularly poorly.
近年来对 Citadel 来说是不错的。2022 年，美联储开始加息以抑制通胀，对冲基金行业受到冲击。重仓高增长股票和科技初创公司的基金表现尤其糟糕。
Citadel had its best-ever year in revenues, with its flagship fund generating a 38% return. About half of Citadel’s overall profits were generated by its commodities unit, particularly its natural-gas traders. The unit spans 25 different teams.
Citadel 在收入方面创下了有史以来的最佳年份，其旗舰基金实现了 38%的回报。Citadel 的整体利润约有一半来自其大宗商品部门，特别是其天然气交易员。该部门由 25 个不同的团队组成。
The 15.3% return Citadel produced in its flagship fund in 2023 trumped Millennium, Point72 and other competitors. Those gains more than doubled Citadel’s lead over its closest competitor on the list of most profitable hedge funds, according to LCH Investments.
根据 LCH Investments 的数据，Citadel 在 2023 年其旗舰基金中实现的 15.3%回报率超过了 Millennium、Point72 和其他竞争对手。这些收益使 Citadel 在最赚钱的对冲基金名单上对其最接近的竞争对手的领先优势翻了一倍多。
While most hedge funds charge fixed management fees, Citadel directly charges clients for all the costs of running the funds, from salaries to office rents and technology. Griffin got the idea for this “pass-through” fee model from an early Citadel investor, Edward Thorp, a pioneering Wall Street quant and author of the mathematical blackjack guide “Beat the Dealer.” Fund expenses at firms like Citadel can amount to more than 7% of assets in a given year, according to Barclays.
虽然大多数对冲基金收取固定管理费，但 Citadel 直接向客户收取从薪水到办公室租金和技术的所有基金运营成本。Griffin 从早期的 Citadel 投资者 Edward Thorp 那里获得了这种“转嫁”费用模式的想法，Thorp 是华尔街量化投资的先驱，也是数学二十一点指南《Beat the Dealer》的作者。根据巴克莱的数据，像 Citadel 这样的公司的基金费用在某一年可能超过资产的 7%。
This year, Citadel’s main fund is up 8.8% through the end of July.
今年，Citadel 的主基金截至 7 月底上涨了 8.8%。
Griffin is now focused on maintaining his edge. Newer copycat firms are crowding into Citadel’s strategies and rivals are trying to pick off its people with pay packages that are sometimes 10 times higher.
格里芬现在专注于保持他的优势。较新的模仿公司正在挤入 Citadel 的策略，竞争对手试图用有时高达 10 倍的薪酬方案挖走其员工。
“Some of our competitors who recruit from here aggressively sometimes will just throw numbers in front of people that are truly irrational, and all you can say is, ‘God bless, good luck and goodbye,’” Griffin said.
“我们的一些竞争对手有时会在这里积极招募，只是给人们提供一些真正不合理的数字，你只能说，‘上帝保佑，祝好运，再见，’”格里芬说。
He is also increasingly vocal in challenging financial regulations that he views as harmful. Citadel was a founding member of a Texas-based group, the National Association of Private Fund Managers, that won a lawsuit in June to invalidate new Securities and Exchange Commission rules governing hedge-fund terms and disclosures.
他也越来越积极地挑战他认为有害的金融法规。Citadel 是一个总部位于德克萨斯的团体——全国私人基金经理协会的创始成员，该协会在六月赢得了一场诉讼，推翻了美国证券交易委员会关于对冲基金条款和披露的新规定。
This past February, Griffin flew to Finland for the annual outing of Citadel’s commodities team. On top of a frozen lake, he strapped into the cockpit of a McLaren sports car to race against some of Citadel’s biggest moneymakers. The Citadel team also faced off over hands of euchre, a Midwestern card game.
今年二月，Griffin 飞往芬兰，参加 Citadel 商品团队的年度活动。在一个冰冻的湖面上，他坐进了一辆 McLaren 跑车的驾驶舱，与 Citadel 的一些最大盈利者竞速。Citadel 团队还在一场中西部纸牌游戏 euchre 中对决。
A portfolio manager in Citadel’s physical gas trading business prevailed behind the wheel, but euchre broke Griffin’s way.
在 Citadel 的实物天然气交易业务中，一位投资组合经理取得了胜利，但尤克尔牌局对 Griffin 有利。
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