Itau Asset Management, a Brazil-based money manager inspired by Ken Griffin's Citadel and Izzy Englander's Millennium Management, has appointed Bruno Serra, a former director at Brazil’s central bank, to raise money for a new family of funds in its mulitmesas (multi-strategy) unit.

Serra, a former monetary policy director at the bank who was instrumental in one of the world’s first tightening cycles following the pandemic, has reportedly raised BRL6 billion ($1.2bn) in two weeks for the funds with commitments for another BRL4bn expected over the next three weeks.

The multimesas unit was created in late 2019 in bid to retain talent after several executives left the business to build their own independent hedge-funds. Like Citadel and Millennium, the unit is made up of separate groups of traders who have individual teams investing independently across asset and geographies and currently comprises about 140 people in 17 trading pods with a combined BRL100bn under management.

Serra's 14-strong trading pod, Janeiro, which means January in Portuguese, will initially manage a fixed-income fund and hedge fund, placing wagers in rates, credit, currencies, commodities and stocks.