Platt runs BlueCrest Capital Management, a private investment company that focuses on rates, emerging markets and equity trades. The Jersey-based firm had returns of 50% in 2019, 95% in 2020, 30% in 2021, 153% in 2022 and 20% in 2023. It returned client money in 2016 to focus on managing the wealth of Platt, his partners and staff.
Platt is a co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, the British-American hedge fund that at its peak managed about $37 billion, but now invests money solely for its partners and employees.
BlueCrest gained almost 50% in 2016 - the first year of trading just Platt and his partners' money, according to a March 13, 2020 report by Bloomberg News. The fund was up about 54% in 2017, 25% in 2018, 50% in 2019, 95% in 2020, 30% in 2021, 153% in 2022 and 20% in 2023, according to Bloomberg.
The billionaire was credited with a 50% share of Bluecrest assets under management of $2.5 billion at the end of 2015, according to a December 2015 report by Bloomberg News, when the firm returned the funds of external investors.
Bluecrest managed $3.9 billion at the beginning of 2022. In the intervening years, Platt is calculated to have taken $450 million in investing profits out of Bluecrest annually, except in 2023, when he is calculated to have withdrawn $2 billion in profits after the firm returned 153% the previous year. Platt's cash balance is comprised mainly of these profits, adjusted to account for market returns and taxes.
The valuation was updated on March 22, 2024 to reflect a change in methodology for Platt's cash holdings, leading to a decline of about $4 billion.
A spokesman for BlueCrest declined to comment on Platt's net worth.
Michael Edward Platt was born on March 18, 1968 in Preston, England, the son of a university professor, according to a 2010 Bloomberg Markets magazine article. He began trading stocks while at school before studying at the London School of Economics. He graduated and joined JPMorgan in New York in 1991, and worked on the bank's derivatives desk, trading interest-rate swaps. Platt said his group was making at least $500 million a year for JPMorgan by the mid-1990s, according to the Bloomberg Markets profile.
He rose to become a managing director of proprietary trading and left to found BlueCrest with fellow trader William Reeves, which they started in London in November 2000. The company initially focused on interest rate bets and its BlueTrend algorithm fund was established in 2004.
At the end of 2012, BlueCrest was managing more than $34 billion in total, which had fallen to $27 billion by September 2014, amid underperformance, clients pulling money, and a February 2014 report from advisor Albourne Partners that highlighted the existence of an internal fund run for select employees. The company announced on Sept. 26, 2014, that Leda Braga, who runs BlueTrend, would be leaving Bluecrest to set up her own computer-driven fund. In December 2015, Bluecrest said it would return all client money to focus on managing the wealth of Platt, Bluecrest partners and employees.
A resident of Geneva, Platt spent five million pounds ($10 million) establishing a London art gallery in 2007.