Moore's Blochet Moves to Switzerland as Hedge-Fund Managers Flee U.K. Tax

Moore Capital Management LP’s Jean- Philippe Blochet, a senior partner at the $15 billion hedge-fund firm, is moving to Zurich from London.

Shawn Pattison, a spokesman for New York-based Moore, confirmed Blochet’s move and the opening of Moore’s Zurich office. Another portfolio manager, Kornelius Klobucar, will be joining Blochet.

London-based financial professional have been picking up stakes and heading to Switzerland this year after Britain raised income taxes for citizens making more than 150,000 pounds ($234,120) to 50 percent from 40 percent. The top tax rates in the U.K. now exceed those in Germany and France for the first time since 1989.

Lighter regulation and the willingness of Swiss cantons, as regional governments are called, to negotiate special tax rates for both individuals and businesses have prompted at least 30 London hedge-fund managers to consider moving to Geneva in the past year, said Shelby du Pasquier, a Geneva-based partner at Lenz & Staehelin, a Swiss law firm.

Other multibillion-dollar funds have already opened offices in Switzerland.

Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP, Europe’s largest hedge-fund firm with more than $30 billion in assets, has relocated to Geneva from London.

BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd., Europe’s third-largest hedge-fund firm, opened a Geneva office for as many as 70 traders and analysts who have worked in London on its two biggest funds.

Blochet, 46, joined Moore at the beginning of the year. He was a one of the five founding partners at Brevan Howard, and worked with Howard at Credit Suisse First Boston’s proprietary fixed-income trading desk.

To contact the reporter on this story: Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net

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