(Bloomberg) -- Brian Sack, a former managing director at D.E. Shaw & Co. and ex-head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s markets group, has joined multi-strategy hedge fund Balyasny Asset Management.

Sack, who departed D.E. Shaw in January 2023 after about a decade, most recently serving as director of global economics, will be a portfolio manager and head of macro strategy at Balyasny, according to people familiar with the matter. A representative for Balyasny declined to comment. Sack started at the firm on Monday.

Sack is joining $21 billion Balyasny after a trying year for the firm. It returned just 2.4% last year, making it one of the worst-performing multi-strategy funds. D.E. Shaw’s Composite fund, meanwhile, gained 9.6% in 2023. Balyasny’s performance was hit by wrong-way equity bets, while macro and commodity wagers produced gains. 

In recent years, the firm has been pushing further into macro investing. As of the end of January, macro bets accounted for about 25% of its invested capital, making it the firm’s second largest strategy. Sack will report into Steven Goldberg, who leads the macro business which has more than 40 portfolio managers.

Sentiment for multi-strategy funds has come under pressure recently amid concerns over their use of leverage and crowded trades. A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. report last month found investor interest in the strategy is waning after peaking in 2023.

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Sack departed D.E. Shaw after the firm posted gains of at least 20% in 2022, bucking losses in major stock and bond indexes, and making it one of the best-performing multistrategy funds that year. During his time at D.E. Shaw, Sack was also a member of its discretionary macro trading unit.

The 53-year old Sack began his career in 1997 at the Federal Reserve Board and rose to be head of monetary and financial market analysis before his departure in 2004. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his time at the Fed Board, Sack helped change the way the US central bank assesses long-run inflation expectations, developing a bond-market measure dubbed the 5-year, 5-year forward breakeven rate.

He later served at the New York Fed before moving on to D.E. Shaw.

Sack was among prominent economists who in mid-2021 called on the Fed to adjust its then-easy monetary policy as bond-market gauges of inflation expectations were bubbling upward.

Read more: Champion of key Fed inflation gauge says policy shift is needed

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