JPMorgan's Highbridge Lays Off Event-Driven Team

Date: Friday, February 4, 2011
Author: Reuters, Emily Chasan

JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Highbridge Capital Management, which oversees about $27 billion in assets, has laid off its event-driven investment team, as part of a streamlining effort, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The five-person team led by Jason Esralew had nearly flat returns in the last year, despite doing well in 2008 and 2009, this person said.

The layoffs, which were reported earlier on Wall Street blog Dealbreaker.com, occurred last week and were mainly because the firm had other managers in its multi-strategy fund pursuing a similar event-driven strategy, this person said, asking not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.