Ex-Millennium Trader Megia Debuts Hedge Fund With $5 Billion

Megia joined Millennium in 2019 after working for a couple of years at Citadel, where he had been hired in 2017 to lead and build out a global government bond trading team. (Image: Bloomberg)

Millennium Management’s former senior trader Diego Megia kicked off his new hedge fund with $5 billion and closed it to new money on the very first day, becoming one of the largest startups in recent years.

As much as $3 billion of the capital for his Taula Capital Management was raised from Millennium and the rest from investors including asset managers, pension plans and sovereign wealth funds, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Megia’s Millennium colleague Stefan Ericsson joined as deputy chief investment officer at the firm, which started on June 1, the person said, asking not to be identified because the details are private.

Megia’s firm joins a select group of hedge funds to be able to launch with billions of dollars in an industry where it’s become increasingly challenging for startups amid a migration of clients toward bigger and multistrategy hedge funds, which promise stable returns. Bobby Jain, a former co-chief investment officer at Millennium, is also expected to start his own firm of a similar size this year.

Taula’s launch is the biggest since ExodusPoint Capital Management — led by Michael Gelband, another Millennium alumnus — debuted in 2018 with $8 billion.

A representative for Taula declined to comment.

Megia has started with an investment team of 25 individuals who worked with him at Millennium, including Norbert Aul, Matteo Sardo, Zachary Peskin, Jeff Wang, Kari Hallgrimsson and Josh Blakey, the person added. Overall, Taula employs 68 people operating across six offices in London, Jersey, New York, Dubai, Milan and Switzerland.

Taula is among several external firms Izzy Englander’s Millennium is tapping to help manage some of its funds, a strategy adopted by many such giants with soaring assets. Others include Delta Global Management and Lorenzo Rossi’s Kedalion Capital Management. Such arrangements make up less than a 10th of Millennium’s teams of traders, and many of the outside groups manage money exclusively for the firm, Bloomberg News has previously reported.

Megia joined Millennium in 2019 after working for a couple of years at Citadel, where he had been hired in 2017 to lead and build out a global government bond trading team. His own investment firm Taula focuses on macro, fixed-income relative value and inflation-risk trading.