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As chief operating officer of Citadel, Beeson has played an important role in developing the infrastructure and technology that have helped the Chicago-based hedge fund firm stand out from its peers.
Gerald Beeson, Citadel
When Gerald Beeson graduated from college in 1994, he had a plum job lined up: One of his professors at Depaul University had helped the finance and accounting double major land an offer from prestigious accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. The potential pluses of such a job -- great benefits, good pay, job security -- were not lost on Beeson, whose background as one of four children of a Chicago cop and a homemaker mother was decidedly blue-collar.
But the bright and ambitious Beeson, who was the first in his family to go to college and attended DePaul on a full academic scholarship, infuriated his professor by turning down the job in favor of a markedly less cushy position working for a relatively unknown 20-something hedge fund manager. Beeson had interned for him during his junior year, and when the manager offered him a job, he jumped at what seemed like a rare opportunity to learn about the world of trading without grinding it out in the pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or Chicago Board of Trade.
That manager was Kenneth Griffin, and the firm Beeson joined eventually became Citadel. When Beeson started as an intern in 1993, he was one of just 18 people, first working as an associate in the accounting team; the firm managed approximately $100 million at the time. He quickly rose through the ranks, taking on the job of controller at age 25 while simultaneously pursuing an MBA at the University of Chicago.
Today, Beeson, 42, is chief operating officer of Citadel, which now manages $23.7 billion in assets and employs more than 1,200 people across its various businesses. The firm runs four hedge funds investing in numerous strategies -- including multistrategy, equities, global fixed income and tactical trading -- and Surveyor Capital, another equity strategy. It also operates Citadel Securities, which encompasses the firm's Global Quantitative Strategies trading business as well as Citadel Execution Services. CES trades more than 850 million shares per day in equity markets on behalf of retail clients.
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