(Bloomberg) — Atte Lahtiranta, chief technology officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., is making the now-familiar move from the Wall Street bank to Citadel, Ken Griffin’s hedge fund.
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Citadel hired Lahtiranta to lead its core engineering group, responsible for the technology underlying its trading and risk management functions – a role that Griffin said is attracting the attention of the heads of major investment firms.
The focus on artificial intelligence has put positions like CTO and chief information officer in the spotlight, Griffin said at the Milken Institute Global Conference in May. Executives in these positions have key roles and “they have the attention of the CEO,” he said.
After joining Goldman in 2019, Lahtiranta’s first few months in office were immediately put to the test as the outbreak of the Covid pandemic forced the company to close offices and continue operations from different locations – a period that ultimately proved extremely profitable for the investment bank.
Firms like Citadel and its competitors have dug deeper into their pockets to recruit top talent from the big banks and their rivals. The increasingly competitive market has led to increasingly expensive compensation packages for a variety of roles.
Griffin’s hedge fund is a popular destination for Goldman veterans, with key investment, operations and management positions filled by executives who formerly worked at the New York bank, including Pablo Salame, Goldman’s former trading chief who now runs the hedge fund.
Citadel’s success is based on its technical expertise and the company’s ability to attract talent, says Umesh Subramanian, himself a former Goldman employee and now Citadel’s CTO.
“We look forward to welcoming Atte,” he said.
Lahtiranta was part of a wave of partner hires that Goldman made in the early days of CEO David Solomon’s tenure at the firm’s helm, a break from years before when the investment bank was reluctant to recruit partners from rivals at the partner level, its highest rank.
Solomon had touted the hiring of Lahtiranta and Marco Argenti, Goldman’s current Chief Information Officer, at the time. For him, technology was the key to remaining competitive in rapidly changing markets and gaining market share from competitors.
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