Ken Griffin chartered a jet with 16 Citadel employees to Houston the day Enron went bankrupt, poached its quant team and turned it into a $30B+ trading machine. Unlike UBS.

@timmbrocks

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Citadelseen in 3 videos →

Why it worked

The story highlights a bold and opportunistic business move by a prominent figure, demonstrating strategic talent acquisition and its massive financial success, which is inherently compelling.

Summary

The video recounts how Ken Griffin of Citadel chartered a jet to recruit Enron's quant team after Enron's bankruptcy, turning it into a highly successful trading machine. This contrasts with UBS's failure to retain the team after acquiring Enron's business.

Structure

1Enron's bankruptcy and Citadel's recruitment
2The contrast with UBS's acquisition
3The success of Citadel's strategy
4The importance of extracting talent

Product placement

Citadel (company, ACTS - its employees are central to the story, removing it would change the story); Enron (company, ACTS - its bankruptcy is the catalyst for the story, removing it would change the story); UBS (company, ACTS - it is contrasted with Citadel's success, removing it would change the story)

On-screen text

Ken Griffin chartered a jet with 16 Citadel employees to Houston the day Enron went bankrupt, poached its quant team and turned it into a $30B+ trading machine. Unlike UBS.

Original caption

#kengriffin #quantresearch #fast #business

More from @timmbrocks

Their other posts in the index, biggest breakout first.

Transcript

I've spent over a lot of time at the proverbial scene of accidents where other firms have gone awry. When Enron filed for bankruptcy, I chartered a Gulfstream jet with 16 people on the Houston and all we did was interview people at Enron for several days. What worked, what didn't work, how they made money, how they ran the business, what their competitive advantages were. The great part about this story, I hired the entire leadership of the quant research effort at Enron. All the people that knew how the place worked. You know, UBS bought the business. Except for the research team. We made, I don't know, 30 billion dollars in commodity since then. And UBS shut the business down. That's about being on the ground. That's about understanding where the business actually created value. And that's about extracting the right people from that moment in time and surrounding them then over the years to come with the right leadership team, the right investment professionals, the right software engineers and building what is today one of the most important commodity businesses in the world.