The quantitative trading team of Deutsche Bank, the Equitech Group, is leaving to start a hedge fund in New York, which will also have a team of 40 people in India, . The India team of the hedge fund, Roc Capital Management LP, will comprise of individuals trained by Equitech. The fund will be headed by Arvind Raghunathan, presently Deutsche Bank’s head of global arbitrage. The hedge fund will open in the second quarter, with a team of more than 20 people in New York, including traders and scinetists globally.
Robert Wolfson, CEO of equity proprietary trading at Deutsche Bank will also be joining Raghunathan as the operating chief of Roc capital. Anupam Ghose, currently working at Credit Suisse Group AG’s prime services group, will be the chief strategy officer at Roc Capital.
The move comes at a time when Deutsche bank is scaling back its riskier businesses. About two weeks back, Josef Ackermann, CEO, Deutsche Bank, had announced his plans of cutting risk by shifting resources from areas such as proprietary trading as the market conditions had revealed some weaknesses in trading operations. He had also said that the firm had reduced risk in proprietary trading by about 75%.
Equitech was a part of the Credit Suisse Group’s proprietary trading unit until 1999. Last month it returned 2.37%, after posting a 1% loss last year.