Matt Zolin has left Lehman Brothers, where he was a New York-based v.p. and high-yield analyst covering the technology sector, to take a newly created position as a director and sector manager in a $2 billion hedge fund group at Citigroup Alternative Investments. Ross Margolies, head of the group, says he is making additional hires as the assets grow. Zolin will start as an analyst, and eventually take on portfolio management responsibilities, Margolies says.
Another reason for the hire of Zolin is that Margolies sees opportunities in capital structure arbitrage, which will be one of Zolin's primary responsibilities. Margolies says the fund employs six different arbitrage strategies, and that capital structure arbitrage has positive returns and a slightly negative correlation with other arbitrage strategies, lowering the volatility of the whole portfolio. Zolin becomes the second member of the team dedicated exclusively to credit. Margolies plans to make one more hire for the credit group by year-end.
Zolin says he left Lehman on good terms. He was a member of the Institutional Investor All-America Fixed-Income Research Team in each of his three years at the firm. Most recently he was a runner-up on the 2002 team. A call toMike Guarnieri, global head of high-yield research at Lehman, was not returned.