Some hedge fund managers have a Machiavellian approach to dealing with failure: screaming, yelling, humiliating, firing, making examples of, etc. Ewan Kirk has a different approach.
The Cantab Capital Partners founder is suffering his worst year ever, down in the 20% to 30% range. And yet it would appear that he has not thrown a single thing or denigrated a single employee's manhood.
Kirk has a more constructive system: If you can't build me some models that work, why don't you try building something with these?
The irreverent – and until this year, highly profitable – Cambridge-based firm, set up by Goldman Sachs’ former head of quantitative trading, spent £2,000 on Lego to boost staff morale this summer after a painful losing streak struck hundreds of millions off its trading portfolio’s value….
Sources tell the Financial Times, work on Cantab’s Lego Death Star is ongoing.
