How to earn £14m at XTX in London: study in Russia
As we noted yesterday, the best paying place for quants in finance may not be Citadel Securities or even Jane Street, but XTX, the electronic trading house run by Alex Gerko, the ex-Russian quant who likes surreal cartoons and nature.
Not everyone at XTX earns a lot of money. Forums are full of people complaining that junior staff at XTX are not all that well paid, but if you're a partner at XTX Research LLP, one of the firm's many London entities, you will share in the profits that are generated by the firm. Last year, the Financial Times notes that 25 Gerko's top people shared £334m, £14m ($18m) each.
Who are they? For anyone disinclined to consult Companies House, we've provided some short bios (where available) below. Aside from being male, there appears to be another point of commonality: it helps to be Russian and to have studied at the New Economic School, like Gerko himself. If not, Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial are also acceptable - even though Gerko frequently rails against the state of maths education in the UK.
The highest earners at XTX:
Dmitrii Altukhov: A mysterious Russian
David Balduzzi. A Chicago maths PhD and former researcher at Deepmind, who joined XTX in 2020.
Yuri Bedny. A quant researcher, chess player and competitive programmer of unknown provenance.
Ivan Belonogov. A quant researcher at XTX since 2020, and former deep learning engineer in Russia. Studied at ITMO university in St. Petersburg.
Paul Bereza. XTX's head of OTC trading dev. A Cambridge mathematician
Peter Cawley. A developer at XTX since 2020, an Oxford mathematican
Pawel Dziepak. A mysterious Pole
Fjodir Gainullin. An Estonian with a PhD from Imperial and degree from Oxford
Maxime Goutagny. A French quant, joined in 2017 from Credit Suisse
Ruitong Huang. A Chinese Canadian quant with a PhD in machine learning, who joined in 2020.
Renat Khabibullin. A Russian quant from the New Economic School and ex-Barclays algo trader
Nikita Kobotaev. A Russian quant from the New Economic School and ex-Barclays algo trader
Alexander Kurshev. A Russian quant from the New Economic School
Joshua Leahy. The CTO. An Oxford physicist.
Sean Ledger. An Oxford Mathematician
Francesco Mazzoli. A mystery figure with an interesting blog.
Jacob Metcalfe. A developer at XTX since 2012. Studied maths at Kings College, worked for Knight Capital previously.
Alexander Migita. A Russian quant from the New Economic School
James Morrill, An Oxford maths PhD
Dmitrii Podoprikhin, A Russian quant from Moscow State University
Lovro Pruzar, A Croatian, former gold medallist in the informatics Olympiad
Siam Rafiee. A software developer from Imperial
Dmitry Shakin. A Russian quant from the New Economic School
Leonid Sislo. A software engineer from Lithuania
Chi Hong Tang. Studied maths at UCL
Igor Vereshchetin. A Russian quant from the New Economic School
Pedro Vitoria. An Oxford PhD
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