A senior leader at the quant division of $46 billion hedge fund Point72 Asset Management is leaving the firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
Issam Bazzi, a senior quant who helped lead the buildout of a centralized trading unit at Cubist Systematic Strategies, is out after nearly three years at the hedge fund.
Bazzi’s team had struggled performance-wise for months and had been down as much as $70 million this year, Business Insider has learned.
A Point72 representative declined to comment. Bazzi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bazzi’s exit comes several months after a surprising leadership shake-up at the top of Cubist, with president Denis Dancanet leaving and ex-WorldQuant exec Geoffrey Lauprete taking his place.
Building a centralized trading unit, akin to a traditional collaborative quant fund, to trade alongside the dozens of independent pods was a key initiative for Dancanet when he joined in 2020. The firm spent tens of millions luring top talent, but none more significant than Bazzi, a Citadel Securities veteran who also overlapped with Dancanet at quant hedge fund PDT.
Amid the changes last September, Bazzi’s fate at the firm was fodder for market chatter, but in October, he and billionaire founder Steve Cohen negotiated a deal for him to stay on, Business Insider previously reported.
Cubist, which had about 60 investing teams in addition to the central team as of last fall, isn’t a stand-alone fund investors can allocate to with separately reported returns and its performance flows into Point72’s overall returns. Point72 had returned 4.5% through February, and like many funds it started March with losses amid turmoil from the Iran War.
Roughly two-thirds of the money managed by Point72 is devoted to stock picking, with the remainder divided between Cubist and its macro investors. The unit’s 2026 performance isn’t clear.
