Morning Coffee: A Goldman Sachs VP who left for Millennium aged 27 is making billions from a beach. The family office with nice smelling staff

Glen Scheinberg lives on Dorado Beach and he is making large pots of gold. Both experiences almost certainly beat working for Goldman Sachs in New York City.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that two pods at hedge fund Millennium, one run by circa 38 year-old Scheinberg and one run by circa 39 year old Pratik Madhvani, made $3.7bn in profits last month. As we noted in December, the two men are Millennium's top portfolio managers. They are thought to run combined teams totalling at least 50 people. If Millennium gives them a 20% share of the profits, that's $740m, or nearly $15m for each person on average for just one month's work. 

💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥

This explains how it is that Scheinberg, who graduated from Brown University in computational biology and who was a Goldman Sachs intern in 2007 and Goldman Sachs vice president (VP) in program trading by the time he left Goldman aged 27 in 2014, afforded a $37m house in Dorado Beach Puerto Rico in 2022. Although Scheinberg says he's based in New York on LinkedIn, Business Insider reported four years ago that he runs his pod from Dorado. Millennium is known to be accommodating about where its portfolio managers are located.

It's not just Scheinberg. His pod, called SRBL also includes three other founding ex-Goldman members: Michael Rems, James Brophy and Richard Li. It's not clear whether they live on the beach too.

Madhvani, meanwhile, lives in Dubai, and has been building his pod out there. Both Scheinberg and Madhvani's pods focus on index rebalancing strategies, which are highly leveraged bets on which securities will be included in or dropped for indexes. Bloomberg notes that last month was a big month for the strategy, with S&P quarterly rebalancing, quarterly changes to the Nasdaq 100, the annual reconstitution of Russell, the sudden inclusion of SpaceX and rebalancing at the end of the quarter. 

In June, Madhvani and Scheinberg got it right. They don't always. In March 2025, the two pods lost $900m. Usually quick to fire people who lose money, Millennium has seemingly infinite patience for Madhvani and Scheinberg. Last month explains why. Now, they just need to avoid losing the money again before bonuses are paid.

Separately, if you have a good idea and are looking for investment, you need to go to Abu Dhabi. And if you go to Abu Dhabi, you need to meet the aromatic people who work for Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. 

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the president of the UAE and the ruler of Abu Dhabi. However, Bloomberg reports that he also runs an "institutional calibre" family office called AC Limited, which manages indeterminate billions of dollars. 

AC Limited employs a team of secretive dealmakers, whom Bloomberg says receive high salaries and 50% discounts on McLaren sports cars. They include Olivier Courtois who once worked for Rothschild, and Rishi Renjen, who once worked for Maverick Capital. They should all smell nice: AC's offices reportedly feature washrooms "stocked with every perfume imaginable." 

Meanwhile.... 

Quant hedge funds are having their worst time since 2023. Blame the equity momentum strategy which buys recent equity winners and sells losers, and which dropped more than 3% for a second straight week. (Bloomberg) 

Leonard Lancia, the former Europe head of systematic market making for derivatives at Citadel Securities left and founded crypto market maker Portofino Technologies. Citadel Securities sued him and now he owes £6m in damages and costs but has not paid it. (Bloomberg) 

Baillie Gifford is offering its people the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy on enhanced terms and is saying things like, "“The future demands new capabilities and ways of working, and we must continue to adapt to meet those changes. Standing still is not an option.” (Financial Times) 

RBC wants to hire 100 bankers across its business lines. (Financial News) 

The Big Four banks - JPMorgan, UBS, ICBC and HSBC - have controlled London bullion clearing for years. Now they've been joined by Citi and are the Big Five. Citi's head of commodities, José Cogolludo, said the move was a “natural extension of our longstanding precious metals business”. (Financial Times) 

Leaving banking does not prepare you for a corporate job. Banking is about abstraction. Corporate jobs are about reality. "There’s no shortcut on time-consuming jobs. I can’t throw bodies or even money at something to speed things up, either.”  (Financial Times) 

Follow me on X. Follow me on LinkedIn. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22  Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. 

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.