Brevan Howard hires Citadel rates talent

Macro hedge funds are still fighting over rates traders. That is the real story here. Brevan Howard has added Mickael Sabban in New York and Ning Guo in London as macro portfolio managers, both with recent Citadel ties, and the move lands in the middle of a wider hiring run across the firm. ### Who just moved? Mickael Sabban is understood to have joined Brevan Howard in New York from Citadel Securities’ rates team. Ning Guo also joined Brevan Howard this month, after spending roughly three years at Citadel and earlier trading rates at Verition in London. Guo had left Citadel in November 2025, which makes this look less like a same-week raid and more like Brevan picking up proven rates risk-takers as they became available. (efinancialcareers.com) ### Why do rates hires matter so much? Because “rates” is where a lot of macro money gets made — or lost. These traders bet on moves in government bond yields, central-bank paths, curve shape, and related derivatives. When inflation, growth, and policy are all moving targets, a strong rates PM is not just another seat on the floor. A strong rates PM is a core engine for a macro platform. That is why these people can move between banks, market makers, and multi-manager hedge funds so easily. (efinancialcareers.com) ### Is this just two hires? No — that is the interesting part. Brevan Howard has also been linked with hiring Jonas Klink from UBS, a senior linear rates trader in Europe. Put that together with Sabban and Guo, and this starts to look like a deliberate build-out in rates and macro rather than a couple of opportunistic additions. The pattern matters more than any one name. (brevanhoward.com) ### Why Brevan Howard? Brevan Howard was built as a macro shop, so this is the firm leaning into its home turf. Its own materials still frame the business around macro and derivatives, and the platform has kept adding investment talent over the past few years. One recent report put the investment staff count at more than 150. In other words, this is not a turnaround story. It is an expansion story. ### Why pull from Citadel? (ifre.com) Because Citadel has spent heavily to deepen fixed-income and macro capabilities, so anyone coming out of that system arrives with exactly the kind of training and pressure-testing rivals want. There is a bit of irony here — firms build elite teams, then those teams become talent pools for competitors. In hedge funds, portability is part of the business model whether anyone likes it or not. (brevanhoward.com) ### Why New York and London? Those are still the two main hubs for developed-markets rates risk. New York matters for Treasuries, Fed-driven macro, and U.S. client flow. London matters for global rates, cross-market relative value, and access to European talent. Hiring one PM in each city suggests coverage breadth, not just headcount growth in a single office. That part is an inference, but it fits the geography of the business and the roles involved. (hedgeweek.com) ### What does this say about the market? Basically, rates talent is still scarce and expensive even after the huge post-2022 macro hiring wave. If firms were backing away from discretionary macro risk, you would expect fewer senior PM moves, not more. Instead, top platforms are still collecting people who can trade policy divergence, volatility, and yield-curve dislocations. Brevan’s latest hires fit that exact pattern. (efinancialcareers.com) ### Bottom line? This is a small personnel story on the surface, but it points to a bigger truth underneath: the war for rates talent is not cooling off. Brevan Howard is still adding firepower in the part of macro that matters most when central banks keep markets guessing. (efinancialcareers.com)