John is joined by Sean Fagan, the Chief Legal Officer of Citadel LLC, and a key legal figure at Citadel Securities. Citadel is the most profitable hedge fund globally while Citadel Securities is the dominant market maker, processing nearly one-third of U.S. equities and options trades. They discuss Sean’s insights into the unique legal challenges of these rapidly growing organizations. Sean has essentially four clients: Citadel, Citadel Securities, founder Ken Griffin, and Griffin’s family office. His responsibilities extend beyond legal oversight to include regulatory affairs and compliance and reflect the complexities of modern finance. Sean’s journey to Citadel was unconventional. He started as a litigator at Bartlett Beck, a boutique trial firm, where he spent nearly half his time in trial. He participated in high-profile cases, including Bush v. Gore, but ultimately realized that trial work was not his passion. A chance meeting with Ken Griffin led to an in-house opportunity at Citadel, where he has been for 20 years. In that time, Citadel has grown from 1,000 employees with $12 billion in AUM to 4,900 employees with $65 billion in AUM. The greatest challenges Sean has at Citadel are building the right teams to meet the demands of rapidly growing markets around the world, developing technology to ensure regulatory compliance across trillions of transactions every day, and maintaining high standards in an organization that is growing as rapidly as Citadel. Citadel has engaged in several high-profile legal battles, including lawsuits against the SEC and IRS, reflecting Citadel’s willingness to challenge regulations it views as unreasonable and unduly burdensome. In retaining outside counsel, Sean looks for lawyers with a strategic vision who can articulate a clear path to winning cases.

Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fm
Host: John B. Quinn
Producer: Alexis Hyde
Music and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

Managing the Legal Department of the World’s Most Profitable Hedge Fund

Law, disrupted