- Balyasny cut down the portfolio of its head of Asia equities so she can focus on building the business.
- Archana Parekh had more than $1 billion of exposure prior to the trim, several people say.
- The firm's global equities business is under the leadership of founder Dmitry Balyasny currently.
Balyasny Asset Management has cut back the portfolio of its Asia equities head, but not because of poor performance.
Archana Parekh, who joined Balyasny in 2022 after a three-year stint at Millennium, is one of a select group of people founder Dmitry Balyasny has tapped to help retool the firm's equities unit, a person close to the firm told Business Insider.
Her portfolio had more than $1 billion in gross market exposure prior to the trim, several people told Business Insider, and it is unclear where it stands now. Parekh declined to comment.
Balyasny, the $20 billion multistrategy firm based in Chicago, parted ways with its global equities head, Jeff Runnfeldt, last October. Runnfeldt has since become the chief investment officer for the new multimanager platform at Fortress Investment Group.
Balyasny, the founder, has been running the equities unit since Runnfeldt's departure, adding talent — such as Point72's Peter Goodwin — and reviewing existing books. Other additions to the unit this year include PMs such as Andrew O'Connor from Weiss, David Lohman from Schonfeld, Marco Minoli from Citadel, and Vaibhav Bajpai from LMR.
However, Anil Gondi, a portfolio manager focused on technology, media, and telecommunications stocks, recently left after less than a year into his second stint at the firm to become the head of long-short equity at rival Walleye.
There are others like Parekh who manage portfolios and also have been tapped by Balyasny to lead part of the retooling, a person close to the firm said, such as senior managing director Stephen Schurr, but Parekh's broad remit is unique within the firm.
She's tasked with scaling existing strategies across the firm's three Asian offices — Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo — as well as recruiting new talent. Balyasny has invested heavily in Asia; stock-picking analysts at the firm have doubled as market exposure has quadrupled over the last two years, Bloomberg previously reported without citing specific figures.
Even as Parekh's book has been trimmed, her team just added a US-based analyst, former Verition analyst Will Brant. Balyasny's Hong Kong branch took a hit last month, though, when star macro PM Robert Tau departed with his team to Millennium.
The firm has made 5.5% through the first half of the year, Business Insider recently reported, trailing peers like Citadel, Point72, and Millennium. The S&P 500 was up close to 15% through the first six months of 2024.
