Hedge Fund LMR Hires BAML Equity Executive William Hillegass

LMR Partners, a London-based hedge-fund firm with $5 billion of assets under management, hired former US head of equity derivatives at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, William Hillegass, who brings over 15 years of experience to the multistrategy fund.

Hillegass joins LMR Partners, which has offices in London, Hong Kong, and New York, to run a pool of investments betting on stocks globally with a focus on equity capital-markets events.

Prior to this appointment, William worked at BAML for nearly two years, based in New York, where he most recently served as a managing director and head of equity derivatives trading for the Americas. Merrill Lynch was recently fined $42 million for misleading institutional customers about how it handled their trading orders. The Bank of America Corp.’s unit settled SEC’s allegations that it routed millions of customer stock orders to outside brokers while telling them it had executed the transactions internally.

Stints at Lehman Brothers and UBS

Hillegass joined Merrill Lynch in 2017 after an eight-year tenure with Barclays, where he was managing director of Equities Equities Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa Read this Term in charge of the bank's equity derivatives portfolio across different sectors.

Before that, Hillegass was a derivatives trader at Lehman Brothers and took on a similar role at UBS where he started his career in 2003. He worked for a collective sixteen years in multiple different segments.

LMR Partners, which uses both computer-driven and discretionary trading styles, was among top-performing hedge-fund startups in its early stages. LMR Partners’ $2.7 billion LMR Fund returned 30 percent in 2010, its first year, 38 percent in 2012, and 10.2 percent in 2017. Despite mounting costs and investor reluctance following a poor performance in 2018, LMR Partners’ managed to raise more funds thanks to its managers’ track record.

Andrew Manuel, a former equity trader for Goldman Sachs, founded LMR with former UBS quant traders Ben Levine and Stefan Renold in 2009 with support from Don Sussman’s Paloma Partners.