Deutsche's former favorite trader hired NY colleagues for new fund

If you wanted to work for Yao King, the former global head of program trading at Deutsche Bank, who broke out into his own 'pod' (YK Asset Management) at Millennium Management last year, you might've left it a bit late.

King has quietly been adding to YK Asset Management in the past few months, but is staying quiet on whether his hiring is now done. All his new hires worked with him at Deutsche Bank.

They include: Michael Barisonek, an index trader at YK Asset Management who spent three years at DB in synthetic equities; Michel Perry, a trader at YK Asset Management who was an index synthetics trader at Deutsche for nearly three years; and Edward Bowlby, a researcher at YK who was an associate in program trading at DB. 

Bowlby joined in October 2019. Barisonek and Perry joined in January 2020.

King also hired Bo Huang, who was most recently head of JPMorgan's program trading desk.

King was said to have been popular at Deutsche Bank and his quiet hiring of former colleagues suggests people there were keen to join him. DB closed its equities sales and trading business in July 2019 and sold its equity derivatives books to Goldman Sachs and Barclays in September.

Deutsche Bank announced its bonuses today and by all accounts they were disappointing. By comparison, Millennium has a reputation for paying well if performance is good - and for ruthlessly culling teams if it is not.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)