Director Risk Management - Event Driven / Special Situations

A leading global multi-strategy hedge fund is seeking to appoint a Director, Risk Management to provide dedicated risk oversight across its Event Driven and Special Situations investment businesses. Working in close partnership with Portfolio Managers and Senior Risk leadership. The successful candidate will play a key role in evaluating portfolio construction, capital deployment and downside risk across a diverse range of catalyst-driven investment strategies.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the primary risk partner for Portfolio Managers investing across Event Driven, Merger Arbitrage, Special Situations, Capital Structure Arbitrage and other catalyst-driven strategies.
• Develop a deep understanding of portfolio construction, investment theses and trade lifecycle, challenging assumptions where appropriate and providing independent risk perspectives.
• Continuously monitor portfolio exposures including gross and net exposures, factor sensitivities, concentration risk, liquidity, financing requirements and downside scenarios across multiple portfolios.
• Assess the risk implications of complex events including mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, spin-offs, restructurings, recapitalisations, bankruptcies, distressed situations, shareholder activism, litigation events and regulatory outcomes.
• Evaluate position sizing recommendations through detailed scenario analysis, probability-weighted outcomes and expected risk-adjusted returns, ensuring capital is deployed efficiently across investment opportunities.
• Perform comprehensive stress testing across individual positions and portfolios, modelling both historical and hypothetical market events to quantify potential downside risks under varying market conditions.
• Analyse cross-portfolio exposures and identify unintended concentrations arising from common catalysts, sectors, counterparties, financing structures or macroeconomic risk factors.
• Partner closely with Portfolio Managers throughout idea generation, trade implementation and ongoing portfolio management, providing proactive risk guidance rather than retrospective reporting.
• Review new trade proposals, assessing expected return versus downside risk, liquidity profile, financing considerations, legal structures and event-specific uncertainties before capital is allocated.
• Challenge portfolio construction decisions where risk concentrations become excessive or downside risks are not adequately compensated by expected returns.
• Build and enhance proprietary risk models covering deal break probabilities, spread volatility, catalyst timing risk, financing risk and scenario-based portfolio analytics.
• Produce clear, concise and actionable risk commentary for senior management, investment committees and executive leadership, highlighting emerging portfolio risks and capital allocation considerations.
• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of the firm's risk management framework by identifying opportunities to improve processes, analytics and reporting across Event Driven and Special Situations strategies.

Requirements

• 8 years' experience within Investment Risk, Portfolio Risk or Front Office Risk Management gained at a leading hedge fund.
• Strong experience covering Event Driven, Merger Arbitrage, Special Situations, Distressed Credit, Capital Structure Arbitrage or other catalyst-driven investment strategies.
• Demonstrable experience partnering directly with Portfolio Managers in a highly collaborative, front-office-facing environment.
• Excellent knowledge of portfolio construction, risk decomposition, stress testing, liquidity analysis and scenario modelling.
• Strong understanding of equity, credit and derivative instruments used within Event Driven portfolios.
• Ability to analyse complex investment situations and communicate risk effectively to senior investment professionals.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills with experience interpreting large datasets and translating analysis into practical investment recommendations.
• Experience using institutional risk systems such as MSCI RiskMetrics, Axioma, Barra, Imagine, Bloomberg, Python, SQL or similar analytical tools would be advantageous.
• Outstanding communication, influencing and stakeholder management skills with the confidence to challenge senior Portfolio Managers constructively.