About

Team size: 10+
Major law firms used: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Simmons & Simmons

AQR Capital Management GC and head of compliance Eva Sanchez has been kept busy since joining the company five months ago.

Last November, the US hedge fund and institutional investor, which has $196bn in assets under management, broke into the Japanese market though its affiliate AQR International, establishing a team in Tokyo.

A month before AQR opened its office in Japan, it established an engineering centre in Bangalore to support the company’s trading systems and market research.

The new Tokyo office joins an office AQR opened in Hong Kong three years ago and a base it has in Sydney.

Globally, there are understood to be around 50 lawyers working for AQR, which is headquartered in Greenwich in Connecticut, but London remains a major hub for the business where Sanchez runs a team of over ten staff across the company’s compliance and regulatory affairs team.

Sanchez, who featured in the 2016 GC Powerlist, was previously GC and head of compliance for the European arm of US hedge fund Citadel for seven years, where she was described by one private practice partner as ‘operating at the cutting edge of the business’.

She was responsible for implanting all European legislation for the company’s asset management activities and quantitative market-making businesses, and was an active member of the Alternative Investment Management Association, where she sat on the board.

Before joining Citadel, she served as global head of legal for nine years at Swiss Re Capital Management and Advisory. She began her career as a finance associate at Clifford Chance in London and Milan.