Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the firm's clients include corporations, governments, institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley ranked No. 61 in the 2023 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a debt default or other credit event. That is, the seller of the CDS insures the buyer against some reference asset defaulting. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments to the seller and, in exchange, may expect to receive a payoff if the asset defaults.
Proprietary trading occurs when a trader trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments with the firm's own money to make a profit for itself. Proprietary trading can create potential conflicts of interest such as insider trading and front running.
Point72 Asset Management, is an American hedge fund. It was founded in 2014 by Steve Cohen, after his previous company S.A.C. Capital Advisors pleaded guilty to insider trading charges.
Citadel LLC is an American multinational hedge fund and financial services company. Founded in 1990 by Ken Griffin, it has more than $62 billion in assets under management as of December 2022. The company has over 2,600 employees, with corporate headquarters in Miami, Florida, and offices throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. Founder, CEO and Co-CIO Griffin owns approximately 85% of the firm. As of December 2022, Citadel is the most successful hedge fund of all time, posting $65.9 billion in net gains since inception in 1990.
Marshall Wace LLP is a British hedge fund headquartered in London, England, founded by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace in 1997. Marshall serves as chairman and chief investment officer, and Wace as a chief executive officer & chief risk officer. The company is recognised as one of the world's largest hedge fund managers.
Brian Hunter is a Canadian former natural gas trader for the now closed Amaranth Advisors hedge fund. Amaranth had over $9 billion in assets but collapsed in 2006 after Hunter's gamble on natural gas futures market went bad.
Michael W. Vranos is an American hedge fund manager and philanthropist who in the 1990s was referred to by some as the "most powerful man on Wall Street." In 1993, he reportedly earned $15 million from trading mortgage bonds. Fortune Magazine once called him "one of the best bond traders on Wall Street." According to a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, he has continued to be regarded as "the best-known mortgage-bond trader on Wall Street."
Raymond Thomas Dalio is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York.
In January 2008, the bank Société Générale lost approximately €4.9 billion closing out positions over three days of trading beginning January 21, 2008, a period in which the market was experiencing a large drop in equity indices. The bank states these positions were fraudulent transactions created by Jérôme Kerviel, a trader with the company. The police stated they lacked evidence to charge him with fraud and charged him with breach of trust and illegally accessing computers. Kerviel states his actions were known to his superiors and that the losses were caused by panic selling by the bank. Société Générale's own wrongs were later established by a French jurisdiction, which led the Cour de cassation to cancel the €4.9 billion sanction on Kerviel.
Brevan Howard is a European hedge fund management company based in Jersey with its funds domiciled in the Cayman Islands. Brevan Howard was founded in 2002 by Alan Howard, alongside four other co-founders including Chris Rokos, and is widely considered to be one of the top global macro hedge funds.
Andrew Hall is an English hedge fund manager who served as the head of commodities trading firm Phibro LLC and the head of his own hedge fund Astenbeck Capital. In 2019, the Financial Times described him as the "most successful oil trader of his generation."
Boaz Weinstein is an American hedge fund manager and founder of Saba Capital Management. He rose to prominence at Deutsche Bank in the early and mid 2000s with his credit default swap and capital structure arbitrage trading strategies. He then formed a proprietary trading group within Deutsche Bank. After leaving the bank in 2009, Weinstein started Saba Capital Management as a separate hedge fund. As of September 2022, Saba manages $4.8 billion in assets.
John P. Costas is an American businessman, banker, and trader. He is the former chairman and CEO of UBS Investment Bank, where he oversaw the growth of the Swiss bank's investment banking franchise globally from 2000 to 2005. From 2005 through 2007, Costas was the chairman and CEO of Dillon Read Capital Management, a UBS proprietary trading unit and alternatives management company.
Michael Edward Novogratz is an American investor, formerly of the investment firm Fortress Investment Group. He is currently CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners which focuses on investments in cryptocurrency.
In April and May 2012, large trading losses occurred at JPMorgan's Chief Investment Office, based on transactions booked through its London branch. The unit was run by Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew, who later stepped down. A series of derivative transactions involving credit default swaps (CDS) were entered, reportedly as part of the bank's "hedging" strategy. Trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the London Whale, accumulated outsized CDS positions in the market. An estimated trading loss of $2 billion was announced. However, the loss amounted to more than $6 billion for JPMorgan Chase.
Pierre Andurand is a French businessman and hedge fund manager. His funds have approximately $2bn in assets under management and have produced cumulative returns of between 900-1300% for investors since 2008. He is also the majority shareholder of the international kickboxing league Glory.
Russell Abrams is an American hedge fund manager and entrepreneur who is the founder of Russellcar, a taxi cab rent-to-own company in Buenos Aires.
Mismarking in securities valuation takes place when the value that is assigned to securities does not reflect what the securities are actually worth, due to intentional fraudulent mispricing. Mismarking misleads investors and fund executives about how much the securities in a securities portfolio managed by a trader are worth, and thus misrepresents performance. When a trader engages in mismarking, it allows him to obtain a higher bonus from the financial firm for which he works, where his bonus is calculated by the performance of the securities portfolio that he is managing.
Citadel Securities LLC is an American market making firm headquartered in Miami. It is one of the largest market makers in the world, and is active in more than 50 countries. It is the largest designated market maker on the New York Stock Exchange. Citadel Securities is a separate entity from the hedge fund Citadel LLC, although both were founded and are majority owned by American hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin. Citadel Securities is expected to eventually move its headquarters from Chicago to Miami, having bought land there to build its new headquarters.
United States 
United Kingdom 
China 
France 
Netherlands 
Japan 
Singapore 
Brazil 
Germany 
Russia 
Austria 
Italy 
Saudi Arabia 
Canada 
Switzerland 
Australia 
Belgium 
Hong Kong 
Chile 
Sweden 
Norway 
Croatia