(Bloomberg) -- Man Group Plc cut jobs for the second time in a year and reshuffled its leadership as part of Chief Executive Officer Robyn Grew’s ongoing overhaul of the world’s biggest publicly listed hedge fund firm.

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The London-based money manager told staff in a memo on Thursday that Greg Bond, chief executive officer of Man Numeric, head of Americas, will become the new chief investment officer for the group in a newly created role.

The firm had to “make some tough decisions, which has resulted in some redundancies in the last few days,” Grew said in the internal memo, seen by Bloomberg News.

A representative for Man Group, which managed $167 billion as of April 14, said a review of the businesses has resulted in the redeployment of some people and a “small reduction” in its global headcount. The company didn’t disclose the number of roles that were eliminated.

The firm’s headcount stood at 1,777 as of Dec. 31, the firm’s annual report shows.

Grew, the first female to be named CEO of the 242-year-old Man Group, has been restructuring the firm since she took the top job in September 2023. Last year, she merged the discretionary trading units and dumped three house brands in a reorganization that saw the exit of a top executive.

The company told staff that Eric Burl, the head of discretionary, was on his way out after more than two decades to explore opportunities beyond finance, Financial News reported this month.

Man Group has been among the leading asset managers investing heavily in cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Bloomberg News reported this month that the company’s quant equity unit started using an AI tool that digs into data for ideas, writes codes for potential strategies and tests them on historic data. Several dozen signals generated by the system have passed the investment committee and are slated to be deployed in live trading, one portfolio manager told Bloomberg News.

“I am particularly excited about the potential for AI to transform the way we operate,” Grew wrote in the memo.

The planned headcount reductions also come at a time when some of Man Group’s funds have reported mixed returns. A chaotic first half of the year was dominated by policy upheaval and Wall Street angst, roiling markets and widening the gap between winners and losers.

Story Continues

Here are the returns of some Man Group funds:

That compares with a roughly 4% return as of June 30 this year for the Bloomberg All Hedge Fund Index.

“It has been impossible for trend following strategies to escape the whipsaw moves in global markets over the last twelve months,” Grew wrote in the memo. “Although we have strong conviction in the long-term benefits of such strategies in clients’ portfolios, and that they will perform again, this recent performance has impacted us. This has made streamlining the business even more important in order to allow us to continue to invest where we need to.”

Other senior management changes in the revamp include:

Steven Desmyter, the firm’s president, will oversee the discretionary division in addition to his role as head of sales & marketing; Carol Ward will continue as chief of Solutions Russell Korgaonkar, CIO for Man AHL, will also take on the new role of head of systematic Dan Taylor, CIO for Man Numeric, will also become deputy head of systematic Michael Kasper will move to a new role as chief operating officer and head of systematic strategy Antoine Forterre will be chief financial officer and chief operating officer, overseeing Central Trading and Execution, Fund Treasury and the firm’s strategy. He will also oversee financial risk Kate Squire, who oversees non-financial risk, will take on a new position as chief administrative officer in addition to her existing role

Chief Operating Officer Doug Hamilton will be leaving the firm. The executive, whose family is from Boston, wishes to pursue opportunities back home, the memo said.

Grew and Forterre will host a town hall on July 30 during which they will answer questions from staff.

Man Group was founded in 1783 by James Man as a barrel maker-cum-brokerage on Harp Lane, about 500 meters from its current office along the Thames in London. Over the next two centuries, it supplied rum to the Royal Navy and traded commodities such as coffee and sugar before eventually focusing exclusively on financial services. In 1989, Man Group began acquiring a computer-driven trading shop called AHL, which, alongside Numeric, are some of its main offerings.

(Updates with town hall in penultimate paragraph. An earlier version corrected the title of an executive in the first bullet of the leadership changes section.)

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