During his time at Goldman Sachs, Mr Kabbaj has been responsible for managing the bank’s relationship with Middle Eastern institutions and is believed to have become one of the bank’s largest producers, according to media reports.

The hire of Mr Kabbaj follows GLG’s appointment of Driss Ben-Brahim from Goldman Sachs in July last year.  While a partner at Goldman Sachs Mr Brahim oversaw the bank’s emerging markets trading, and was hired by GLG to help expand the firm's special situations business.

In other developments, GLG is to acquire Société Générale Asset Management, the French bank's UK long only asset management business. Under the transaction, which is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of this year, GLG will acquire around $8.2 billion of assets under management along with SGAM UK’s investment and support staff, who are primarily based in London.

GLG has said the acquisition will bring added scale and breadth to its existing long only strategies and new distribution channels for GLG’s alternative strategies. It also expects to have a distribution agreement with Société Générale covering GLG’s existing alternative and long only offerings.

At 31 December 2008, GLG's net assets under management stood at $15 billion, representing a decrease of 13 per cent from $17.3 billion at 30 September, and a 39 per cent fall from $24.6 billion at the end of 2007.