Rocco Paduano joins Credit Suisse

Former hedge fund manager Rocco Paduano has joined Credit Suisse as Asia-Pacific chief operating officer for prime services.

He moves into this newly created role from HSH Investment Partners, a tie-up between Hamon Investment Group and Hong Kong hedge fund manager Hindsight that was announced in April. No announcement has been made yet about a successor at HSH Investment Partners.

Paduano had previously been a prime broker at both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In AsianInvestor's opinion, he was one of the top risk management specialists in the Hong Kong hedge fund world; someone who thought about risk in ways others did not perceive. He made some comments to us that were published in summer 2008 that seemed to show ominous prescience of a crisis that had not yet materialised.

"People are worried more about leverage than value-at-risk," he said back then. "They are concerned about how much leverage your fund uses, rather than how you account for leverage, meaning; do you apply delta-adjusted utilisation of it or gross notional numbers? That distinction can be even more important than just the overall amount of leverage employed."

We hope you all took notice of those gnomic remarks at the time.

Paduano also used to work at US defence contractor Raytheon, so will be in good militaristic company at Credit Suisse, where he will report locally to head of prime services Matt Pecot, who was at one time a US Special Forces Commander in Japan.