Citadel’s Sticky Employee Pay Weighed on $5.3 Billion Gains (1)

Employee pay at Ken Griffin’s Citadel held fast last year despite lower returns, underscoring the burdensome costs that come with running giant multistrategy hedge funds amid a heated fight for talent.

Operating costs charged to Citadel’s three flagship multistrategy funds, which hold most of its $66 billion in assets, rose 4% to nearly $4.5 billion last year, according to bond offering documents obtained by Bloomberg.

While the preliminary annual figures didn’t include how much of that total was tied to pay, applying an expense ratio included for the first nine months of the year would result in compensation costs ...