Bluecrest was founded in 2000 as a hedge fund by Michael Platt and William Reeves who were both previously senior proprietary traders at JPMorgan Chase.[1][3]
In 2014, Bluecrest spun off $8.2 billion worth of assets into a new company, Systematica Investments, run by Bluecrest employee, Leda Braga. CNBC has referred to Braga as "the most powerful woman in Hedge Funds", earning in excess of $50 million annually.[4][5]
In 2015, Bluecrest returned all outside capital to investors and transitioned into a family office,[2] which is a private investment partnership that manages money only for its partners and employees.[6][7]
The fund generated returns of 50% in 2016, 54% in 2017,[8] 25% in 2018 when the average hedge fund lost money, and 50% in 2019.[9]
In March 2020, BlueCrest reduced the size of its relative-value trading book, which seeks to exploit anomalies in related securities. The company also cut risk across the firm by about $1 billion. BlueCrest suffered some losses after the sell-off, but the investment fund was up for the year through the close of trading on 11 March.[10]
BlueCrest continued expanding its trading teams after becoming a family office, hiring additional portfolio managers across macro and relative-value strategies beginning in 2020.[11]
On 8 December 2020, The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that BlueCrest had agreed to pay $170 million to settle charges arising from inadequate disclosures, material misstatements, and misleading omissions concerning its transfer of top traders from its flagship client fund, BlueCrest Capital International (BCI), to a proprietary fund, BSMA Limited, and replacement of those traders with an underperforming algorithm.[12]
The fund generated returns of 153% in 2022, 20% in 2023 and 38% in 2024.[13][2][14]
