Israel Englander’s Millennium Management has poached rival Balyasny’s Steve Schurr, wooing him with a potential compensation package worth more than $100 million. The move comes after one year of gardening leave.
Also see our exclusive from March 2025 - Balyasny’s Stephen Schurr: These Three Popular Shorts Are Better Longs
Steve Schurr at Balyasny
Most recently, Schurr served as Balyasny’s senior managing director of Fundamental Equities after being promoted to the leadership team in 2023. His promotion came after global equities chief Jeff Runnfeldt’s exit. Schurr’s departure comes at a critical time for Balyasny, which is working on revamping its equities division as it seeks to expand its trading department.
Balyasny has about $24 million in assets under management and has been trying to draw in leading talent via high-performance incentives of up to $50 million. Generally, the firm’s compensation packages last for multiple years and tend to be linked to performance. The These packages also typically include claw-back provisions, which makes them both high stakes and lucrative for workers.
Read hedge fund letters here
Balyasny outperforms Millennium
Millennium Management is known for generating consistent positive returns. However, it posted a 2% decline for the first quarter on the back of volatility triggered by renewed tensions between the U.S. and China related to trade.
On the other hand, Balyasny returned 3.4% year to date through late April, outperforming the wider hedge fund industry’s 0.65% decline for the first quarter, according to data from Bloomberg.
Schurr originally took a portfolio manager position at Balyasny in 2021, rapidly rising through the firm’s ranks. Previously, he worked at Point72 Asset Management and Kynikos Associates, earning him a spot among the hedge fund industry’s top managers.
Schurr presents stock picks at CSIC
At the Capstone Student Investment Conference (CSIC) in March, Schurr explained how short sellers go long. He also shared three stocks that “looked like catnip to a short seller” but that he felt were better long positions: Brinks, Philip Morris and Blue Bird.
Brinks
Schurr said the short narrative for Brinks was that it was tied to a dying cash model, but with a closer look, he found that the company wasn’t actually linked to cash transactions. Instead, he said Brinks is connected to the existence of cash.
Although the company had been left for dead, Schurr said its organic sales have risen over 5% annually for the last five, 10 and 15 years. Additionally, Brinks migrated to a new business model, introducing its digital retail solutions business Smart Safe.
Philip Morris
Although a few hedge funds are bullish on Philip Morris, Schurr said the short thesis was linked to reports about Louisiana banning elicit non-FDA-authorized vapes. However, upon closer examination, he said around 80% of the vape market consisted of illicit Chinese vapes that the FDA had not authorized.
Schurr started to think about how a ban on such vapes would benefit Philip Morris and all four of the legacy tobacco companies, which he’s bullish on.
Blue Bird
Blue Bird stock has plummeted roughly 40% since the markets started to realize that President Donald Trump would be reelected. According to Schurr, Blue Bird’s EBITDA multiple was at the lowest level ever because it’s “tethered to government spending.
The company holds around one-third of the school-bus market and has entered into electric buses as well, amounting to about 6% of its sales. Investors widely expected Blue Bird to be destroyed by Trump’s reelection, but Schurr remains skeptical that anything in Washington will really change.
Thus, he believes Blue Bird is a misunderstood stock that’s “incredibly cheap.”
Originally reported by Bloomberg, neither Millennium nor Balyasny has responded, and Schurr himself also declined requests for comment.
