Quadrature Capital: the hyper-secretive prop trading firm that's "a bit of a cult"

What is Quadrature Capital? Is it a hedge fund? Is it a high frequency proprietary trading firm? Is it a vehicle for creating money to mitigate the climate emergency? 

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Or is it all of the above? One thing is certain: Quadrature is not going to say any more than is necessary.  

Quadrature didn't respond to multiple requests to comment for this article. Its website describes it as a "tech business" that takes market neutral trading positions determined by "statistical models" to generate returns on its proprietary capital. However, the most recent filing for Quadrature Capital Limited describes the firm as a provider of "investment management services" that receives a fee for its assets under management. 

There are rumours of investments in a mountain of GPUs in the style of XTX to facilitate AI-powered trading algorithms. There are tales of lavish away days, of alcohol on tap, of people joining and never leaving again in the style of Oompa-Loompas. And there's the undisputed reality of high pay and huge donations to the Quadrature Climate Foundation. 

The undisputed realities are recorded in accounts filed with Companies House. Last year, Quadrature Capital Limited paid its average UK employee £2.46m, which was generous but down from a peak of £3.6m in 2022. The Financial Times notes that Quadrature's billionaire founders, Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, who receive no salary from the company, instead took a combined £56.7m in tax efficient loans last year. At the same time, the Quadrature Climate Foundation received £269m of donations in 2023, and it paid its 14 employees £293k each. Setiya, in particular, is prone to posting impassioned pleas for climate consciousness on social media, where he says we're currently on a trajectory for "overshoot" and that collective action must be taken to cut emissions.

While Quadrature's high pay and higher purposes are recorded, its working conditions are both mysterious and not. It's website lauds its exceptional, leafy, offices. In London, there's a large onsite gym and "chalet, lake and beach-themed" meeting rooms. A Singapore office opened in 2023. A New York office opened in September 2024. There are music lessons and free books. There are summer and winter annual office trips, negated by carbon offsets. 

Beyond that, all is conjecture. There are unconfirmed suggestions that the annual office trips might involve private jets, suggesting resulting carbon offsets would be manifold. However, one London insider claims there were simply picnics in a local park. There are claims of perpetual beer on tap, like a WeWork, but another insider says no one drinks it. Mostly, there are suggestions that Quadrature is unusually secretive, which was our experience of approaching people there. - Various employees wanted to know what was being written and whether it would be fair and positive. None wanted to contribute. There was mention of NDAs.  "Quadrature is a bit of a cult and that's intentional," said one insider, noting that staff are kept abnormally happy. "The facilities are incredibly good. A lot of people would be prepared to accept less." No one wants to rock the boat. 

Quadrature isn't a big place. While Jane Street employs over 2,600 people and has generated $14bn of net trading revenues in nine months, Quadrature Capital Limited generated £588m of revenues in the 12 months to January 2024 and employed 143 people. It's tiny.  

If you want to work for Quadrature, sources say the person to know is Ada Offonry, a Warwick economics graduate who joined in 2021 to manage talent acquisition. Offonry is a diversity champion, and Quadrature is said to favour diverse hires. It recruits interns heavily too, through Hannah Ewert, who joined from Meta in 2021. 

Unless they're interns, people who've joined Quadrature rarely seem to leave. There are, however, a few exceptions and rumblings on some forums about an unconfirmed rift between technology and operations. Some people come and go. Laurent Mazare, a former Jane Street and DeepMind researcher, joined in June 2023 and left again four months later in September. Mike White, a former technology MD at WorldQuant, joined in May 2023 and left again October. Was this because they were removed or restless? No one is saying. And that includes Quadrature. 

While Quadrature operates in its leafy interiors behind closed doors, the consensus seems to be that it's a fine place to work if you're a quant and that's grown big without anyone paying much attention. "All I know is that I met them around 2011 or so, and they were four guys sitting in a basement somewhere in the City. And then a few years later they were in a massive skyscraper with lots and lots of people working for them," one senior quant notes.

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