• Motus Capital Management will seek alpha from tokens and deliver yield opportunities with a focus on risk management
  • Matt Zhang, Citi’s former global co-head of structured products trading, had also left to start a crypto business last year

The former co-heads of digital assets at Citi have launched an investment management company dedicated to crypto assets. 

Alex Kriete and Greg Girasole announced the venture, called Motus Capital Management, in Thursday LinkedIn posts.

Kriete and Girasole, who spent 11 and seven years at Citi, respectively, had most recently worked as the company’s co-heads of digital assets.

Frank Cavallo also serves as founder and managing partner to the new company. He was an investment counselor at Citi Private Bank for the past 12 years, according to his LinkedIn page. There, he oversaw $8 billion for roughly 40 families spanning traditional, alternative and direct investments.

“We will bring our decades of combined experience advising and managing clients’ wealth to this rapidly-developing market, leveraging a robust knowledge of, passion for, and deep network across the ecosystem to drive our research and investment process,” Kriete wrote on LinkedIn. “We could not be more excited to help our investors navigate the challenges and opportunities this market presents.”

Motus Capital Management — named for the Latin word for movement, motion or progress — deploys a repeatable research and investment process to seek alpha from tokens and deliver yield opportunities with a focus on risk management, according to its website.

Kriete and Girasole had revealed last month they were leaving Citi to start their own venture, but did not offer additional details. At the time, Kriete said​ he believes digital assets “will continue to grow in importance to global capital markets and the formation of new business models.”

Their departures followed the exit of Matt Zhang, Citi’s former global co-head of structured products trading, who also left the company to start a crypto business. 

Citi announced in November that it was seeking to fill more than 100 positions related to digital assets within the bank’s institutional client group.

Kriete did not immediately return a request for comment.

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  • Ben Strack is a Denver-based reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. Contact Ben via email at [email protected]