如何看待科大校友Min Li被Virtu holdings起訴？

12-29

VIRTU KCG HOLDINGS LLC et al v. LI (2:17-cv-08296), New Jersey District Court
According to the 25-page complaint, Virtu claims that Li copied trading models from the personal directories of other quants at KCG to his personal directory on the company』s server. The trading firm, which does not accuse Li of taking any trading code, claims Li was not authorized to see some of the trading models he copied.
Li has not yet filed an answer to the allegations in court. But in a filing with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Li denies improperly accessing and copying confidential information, saying it was common practice at the company for quants to access and copy to their work directories any unencrypted information contained in the firm』s unsecured directories.

「Virtu claims that the information I accessed should not have been in an unsecured directory, and that it was improperly placed there by another employee,」 Li says in his regulatory filing. 「I did not know, and had no reason to know, that the information was restricted or had been wrongfully placed in an unsecured directory by someone else.」
Li added: 「I have asked Virtu in the strongest possible terms to correct its false statements. But it refuses to do so.」
Virtu declined to comment, but the trading firm seems unmoved. The company wants a federal judge to permanently ban Li from developing high-frequency trading models, effectively ending his trading career.

說實話，Virtu如此小心是不無道理的。雖然Min Li可以有足夠的證據向法院證明自己無違規/違法的動機，或者即便是有違規也是出於好的動機（good will），但大家一定都心知肚明他這麼做多少是有些私心的。

這個案子因為缺乏證據多半就不了了之了。根據美國僱傭關係At will原則Virtu多半也不會讓Min Li繼續在那裡工作了。對於Virtu來說內在風險因素少了一個，Min Li大概也可以拿著non-compete的錢在其他領域繼續找工作。

但這件事情反映出來的事情是悲涼的。Quant Hedge Fund/Trading Shops聚集了大量的頂尖人才，但是整個行業的發展卻是日落西山。原因之一，就是這種anti-collaboration的工作環境。公司極力阻止這些聰明人之間互相交流研究思路，幾乎很少回饋開源社區，很多Quant Analyst完全不知道自己組的錢是怎麼掙的，他們只是單向地把自己的alpha signal提交給PM，卻不知道自己的signal是如何被添加到策略里。但凡你有稍微一點點的越界，公司馬上就和你翻臉，讓你在業內業外臭名昭著。

對比一下蓬勃發展的IT行業就知道了。Two Sigma（一個頂級hedge fund）在自己網站上標榜自己遠早於IT公司就開發了大數據處理及建模的技術。但那又怎樣呢，當IT Giants進入這個領域，他們很快就開發出了遠遠好於Two Sigma的產品。

我相信Min離開Virtu未必是壞事，趁自己還有競爭力早點學點cutting edge的東西，找找靠譜的合作夥伴一起做大事，總是比待在一個處處防著自己的公司里被溫水煮著要好太多。

補充一下（都是基於公開信息，不涉及任何公司機密，請各位同僚放心）

事情的起因是其他回答里提到的 Zhengquan Zhang涉嫌盜取公司代碼被刑事+民事起訴。

Software dev cuffed for "nicking proprietary financial trading code"

這個盜取方式也是很nb，冒用同事的ID登錄，被同事發現並上報。不僅如此，Zhengquan還將大量代碼上傳到外部的託管平台，其他細節請自己看。其實我最不能理解的是，已經案發了為啥不趕緊收拾一下東西跑路，要等著關進監獄被黑叔叔爆菊嘛？

這件事發生以後，KCG做了一個內部大排查，發現了更多違規越權訪問不屬於自己代碼的事情，於是就又查出了另外兩個人：Min Li 和 Khandekar涉嫌違規訪問。參加這篇新聞稿

Forbes Welcome

所以呢，不是「惡意的猜測是想裁員，又不想它們去競爭對手那裡？」，而是混亂的內部管理和許可權設置之前沒有引起重視，現在搞的不好看了而已。

當然，我還是想說，KCG的代碼，又那麼值得偷否？

Virtu現在不行了就到處咬人！Doug Cifu就是笑面虎。

這公司似乎還因為其他原因在不同的時間起訴了另外幾個人？

Virtu Financial"s High-Frequency Legal Battles Against Quant Employees

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2017/11/20/virtus-high-frequency-legal-battles-against-quant-employees/

KCG』s attitude toward Khandekar changed after the company started investigating Zhengquan Zhang. All of KCG』s employee battles in 2017 are connected to the strange story of this 32-year-old Chinese national who was arrested in his Santa Clara, Calif., home in April.