By Ivan Anderzhanov
Dmitri Kryukov, a co-founder of the investment firm Kazimir Partners, has set up a new hedge fund and hired six former colleagues to help run it.
Kryukov quit Kazimir a year ago after a bitter dispute with the other co-founder Frank Mosier. The pair had set up the firm in 2002 having working together previously at Renaissance Capital.
A non-compete between Kazimir and the new Verno Capital expired recently which allowed Kryukov to hire Bruce Bower, Karen Clarke and Michelle Alifanz Carson.
Kryukov will be chief investment officer of Verno. Clarke will be chief executive, Bower will be a portfolio manager while Alifanz Carson will be head of business development.
The three partners have also been joined by former research colleagues, Anton Terentiev, as director of research, Sergey Belyaev as deputy portfolio manager and Nataliya Nenarokomova as senior research analyst.
How this affects Kazimir Partners is anyone's guess. Insiders suggested most of the staff obviously sided with Kryukov in the row over the firm's running but waited until he went through all the necessary regulatory hoops before joining him at Verno.
The first fund, the Verno Russia launched on 15 January 2010, has been seeded by the partners with an initial $15m. The firm hopes to announce a futher substantial injection of capital shortly.
The new company has offices in Moscow, Switzerland and the US.
Kryukov said in a statement: “Investing in Russia has always required a combination of fortitude and expert local knowledge and our new fund has been designed to capture the upside in Russia whilst protecting against large draw-downs.
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