Vassilis Paschopoulos, the former head of European investment grade trading at Deutsche Bank who left last year as part of a shake-up of its credit business, has launched his own hedge fund along with former colleague Nikos Kargadouris.
Balliol Capital, a boutique credit-focused hedge fund, gained approval from the Financial Conduct Authority in mid-September, and currently has just three senior staff.
Paschopoulos, who was a managing director at Deutsche Bank for two years before his exit in August last year, has teamed up with Kargadouris, who was most recently a partner and portfolio manager at hedge fund Lucidus Capital Partners. Meanwhile, James Mabey, formerly chief operating officer at MC Squared Global Investors, has taken the same position at Balliol.
Paschopoulos rejoined Deutsche Bank in June 2011 after two years at UBS where he was head of IG corporates credit trading. Previously, he had spent over six years at the German bank, whereas Kargadouris worked at Deutsche for nearly two years until joining Lucidus in May 2012.
Paschopoulos left Deutsche Bank last year after it merged its investment grade credit trading business with its ABS trading division. He was one of a number of senior departures including Bjoern Wiegelmann and Alexis Serero, head of index trading, who joined Citigroup, and James Nowak, who went to Goldman Sachs.
In the second half of 2012, Deutsche merged its credit and rates business, but critics argued that the latter had more power within the organisation and those in the credit business felt increasingly marginalised – a notion backed up by the high level departures. However, it separated the two businesses again in 2013, but the trading arms remained together.
Antoine Cornut, head of flow credit tading at Deutsche bank, also left the firm in 2012 to launch his own hedge fund, Camares Capital. It has since made profits of $1.4m.
