Millennium Armed With UBS Money Pays Up for UBS Traders

Israel Englander’s Millennium Management LLC is hiring traders from UBS AG’s hedge-fund unit with help from an unlikely source: the Swiss bank’s own clients.

At least four portfolio managers have left UBS O’Connor LLC since April for Millennium, lured by signing bonuses and offers to replace deferred compensation owed to them by Switzerland’s biggest bank, said three people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the departures haven’t been made public. Millennium, which oversees about $17.8 billion, can pass on the cost of those incentives directly to its backers, among them UBS’s asset-management unit, because the firm is one of the few hedge funds that charges investors annual operating expenses rather than a fixed management fee, the people said.