Steven Cohen returns to London after insider trading claims

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The US investment firm that oversees billionaire Steven Cohen’s wealth has agreed a deal to return to the UK, its new landlord has said.

Two years after closing its London offices amid insider-trading allegations, Point 72 Asset Management will move to St James’s Square in London’s hedge-fund heartland.

The company plans to be operating out of the capital by the first quarter of 2016. It previously employed around 50 people in London.

In 2013 it was agreed that SAC Capital Advisors, the predecessor to Point 72, would pay $1.8bn (£1.2bn) in fines and other penalties.

Mr Cohen himself was not charged, and Point 72 is a family office that manages the $11bn in Cohen family and employee assets.

He is known for being an adept poker player and for his love of art, and bought Picasso’s Le Rêve for $155m.

In a boost for the fund-management industry in the UK, Mr Cohen will begin a hiring spree. Two UK businesses were registered with Companies House in June: Point72 Europe (London) and Point72 UK.

Green Property said it has finalised a contract with Point 72 for 7,000sq ft of office space. It will pay £147.50 per square foot – one of the highest London office rents seen since the recession bit. Mike Tapp, director at Green Property, said Point 72 would be joining companies such as Société Générale in the block.

The 8 St James’s Square building was once part of a portfolio of properties owned by a company affiliated to convicted real-estate fraudster Achilleas Kallakis, who was known as “The Don” on the international poker circuit.

Ahead of the deal completing, Point72 president Doug Haynes last month said in a staff memo: “Our return reflects the firm’s vitality and our continued pursuit of being the industry’s premier asset management firm.”

He added that the move was determined by “whether our European investing would be meaningfully advanced by opening a physical office”. “We concluded it will be.”

SAC Capital Advisors, which was at one time a $14bn hedge fund, was founded by Mr Cohen in 1992 with $25m.