(Bloomberg) — Citadel’s billionaire founder Ken Griffin is upholding his plans for Asia expansion, encouraged by China President Xi Jinping’s renewed focus on the economy.
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Beijing’s recent moves to relax Covid measures and to support property markets “indicates that Xi’s team is committed to, once again, re-accelerating Chinese economic growth,” Griffin said in an interview at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
“China, given the size of its capital markets, is a center of focus for our investment team,” Griffin said Tuesday, adding that stronger growth in the world’s second-largest economy could lower the risks of a deep recession next year.
“If we see higher growth in China, that will make the recession shallower,” said the chief executive officer of the Miami-based hedge fund with $59 billion in assets. “Seeing growth in the region accelerate only encourages us to increase the size of our commitment.”
Xi and US President Joe Biden met at the Group of 20 summit this week in Indonesia, offering the first signs of a thawing in relations between the two countries.
“The most important outcome is the simple fact that they met,” Griffin said. “We need to have engagement by the leaders of these two global superpowers to see if we can find a path to a different trajectory than we’ve been on for the last 18 months.”
Griffin is looking to hire more software engineers and people with math and statistics skills for quantitative research in Asia. He declined to provide a specific target.
Citadel operates across Asia, with offices in cities including Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai. Citadel and Citadel Securities snapped up extra office space in Hong Kong this year to accommodate expanding teams. The two companies have increased their Asia-Pacific headcount by more than 60% to about 350, people familiar with the moves said in July.
We “continue to invest in hiring talented people and in the business, even in the face of a significant probability of a recession,” he said. “If we over-invest in the next 12 to 18 months, that’s okay. We’re here for the long game.”
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