Ashvin Chhabra (Art by Chris Buzelli)Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons’ family office has tapped Merrill Lynch’s CIO to
run its investments, CIO confirmed
with two people familiar with the matter.
Ashvin Chhabra currently oversees investments and strategies for Merrill’s wealth management division. He will take over as president of New York-based Euclidean Capital in September, Bloomberg reported.
The 2012 Power 100 member’s exit was first announced internally in late June. Merrill Lynch did not respond to a request for comment at time of press.
Although the amount of total assets Chhabra will be managing at Euclidean is unknown, Simons is reported to be worth $14 billion as of July, according to Forbes.
Simons—a mathematics professor at Stony Brook University—retired from Renaissance Technologies in 2009, a hedge fund he founded 27 years earlier.
The former military code breaker and his wife also co-founded the Simons Foundation in 1994.
Simons serves on the board of trustees of various organizations, including the Institute for Advanced Study, where Chhabra spent six years as CIO. From 2007 to 2013, he managed the $1 billion endowment for research in the sciences and humanities.
“In navigating financial markets, it becomes important to understand and differentiate between what one can control and what one cannot,” Chhabra told CIO in 2012. “I aspire to bring the best principles of investing and risk management, now available mainly to the affluent, to every household.”
Chhabra also spent time as managing director of wealth management at Merrill Lynch and was head of quantitative research at JP Morgan.
He has a Ph.D. in applied physics from Yale University, a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, and a bachelor’s degree from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India.
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