Barclays trades with QRT exceed $100B, highlighting hedge fund’s role in prime brokerage

Barclays has racked up more than $100 billion in cumulative trades with Qube Research & Technologies, a figure that says as much about the bank’s prime brokerage ambitions as it does about the quiet ascent of one of the most prolific quantitative hedge funds in the world. QRT, which manages roughly $38 billion in assets as of March 2025, has become a cornerstone client for Barclays’ prime services division. From Credit Suisse spinoff to prime brokerage heavyweight QRT was spun out of Credit Suisse in 2018 with roughly $1 billion in initial capital and a team of about 100 people. Seven years later, it employs somewhere between 1,400 and 2,000 staff and has ballooned its AUM nearly 38-fold. The firm deploys systematic strategies across equities, foreign exchange, and commodities. Quantitative funds like QRT execute thousands of trades daily, each one guided by algorithms and statistical models, generating enormous transaction flow. For Barclays, landing QRT as a major client has been a competitive win. The bank climbed to fifth place in prime brokerage fee revenue rankings as of June 2024, up from seventh five years earlier. The awkward footnote: QRT shorted Barclays stock In Mar...