Lekker schakenDeep Blue Capital hired Wim den Hartog as new Managing Director. Den Hartog previously worked for Goldman Sachs Clearing and was briefly co-head of IMC Chicago. In his last job he was replaced by Osi Lilian, who returned after a sabbatical. Den Hartog’s move to Deep Blue is an horizontal career change at best. But then again, the trading business has seen better days.

Robin de Vilder

The founder of Deep Blue is the well known mathematician Robin de Vilder. He’s also being associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, but he’s quite notorious in the Netherlands for some other issues. In short, in 1987 at the age of 26 he swindled ten million guilders from investors. He was convicted to two years in prison, which he finally served in 1995 after doing his phd in mathematics. Given the status and wealth of De Vilder’s family, his father as chairman of the chamber of commerce in Amsterdam and the involvement of media tycoons (the victims) – the matter stirred a lot of attention.

Quantitative Approach

Deep Blue hires mostly mathematicians and has a very quantitive approach to trading. With their own models they are said to be finally earning a good profit last year. Company is located in the same building als Flow Traders, and Flow used to have a stake in the company. When Summit Capital bought their stake in Flow, the ties between Deep Blue and Flow were cut.

Head of HR department is Fiona de Vilder, and they are hiring new chess players. She’s also famous herself, for having been a candidate for state secretary in the government, in 2002 for the LPF.

Update

Small correction. Den Hartog wasn’t replaced by Osi Lilian in IMC Chicago. Mr Lillian has already been working there since October 2012, as Global head of Business Planning & Analysis – to be more specific.

Second, while some people in the comments joke about mr Lilian’s past incident with the Dutch tax authorities – IMC wishes to  say they are complying with all tax rules including those by the IRS. That is good.

Jack