Hedge fund chief Dmitry Balyasny selling pair of Chicago condos

Bob.Allen
Oct 11, 2023
1 year ago
Four_Seasons_Chicago
Credit: JAMESON SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

Dmitry Balyasny, who heads a $20 billion Chicago-based hedge fund, has a pair of high-floor condos for sale at the Four Seasons downtown, at a combined price of nearly $8 million.

Balyasny, co-founder and chief investment officer of 22-year-old Balyasny Asset Management, and his wife, Elona, put one unit — a four-bedroom, 4,500-square-foot space on the 65th floor — on the market Oct. 5 at just under $4.5 million.

On the same floor, they have had a three-bedroom, 4,500-square-footer for sale since December 2021, when they were asking $4.25 million for it. On Oct. 5, they cut the price to just under $3.5 million.

A representative for Balyasny did not respond to a request for comment. The listing agent for both condos, Nancy Tassone of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Four Seasons hotel and condos, which have a Delaware Place address, are on the upper floors of the Bloomingdale’s building on North Michigan Avenue.

Tassone’s listing says the condos are available individually or together and that they’re connected by French doors. Otherwise, they appear from the listing photos to be separate, each with its own kitchen, dining room, primary bedroom and bath.

The Cook County records are unclear on whether the Balyasnys bought the condos as a pair, but they bought at least one of the two in 1999. They own both condos through a limited-liability company whose address is in the same part of Wyoming where they have a home, and the Cook County Treasurer addresses the tax bills to their name, not the LLC. 

In 2021, during the pandemic, Elona Balyasny, who uses the name Rebecca Balyasny, said in an interview that “my husband and I decided that we wanted to live in Wyoming and raise our kids away from the city.”

“We realized that we could work very effectively with the peace and quiet of Wyoming while traveling to cities frequently for business,” she said at the time. Public records in Teton County, Wyoming, show the Balyasnys built a $3.2 million home in Jackson in 2006.

The Balyasny fund is still headquartered in Chicago, according to the firm’s LinkedIn page, which says it has 16 offices around the world and 159 investment teams, employing 1,800 people in all. That is, Dmitry Balyasny may have shifted his home base to Wyoming, but unlike Ken Griffin and Citadel moving to Florida, he didn’t take the office with him.

Bloomberg reported last week that Balyasny’s firm “has struggled this year, returning just 2% through August and trailing peers including Citadel and Millennium Management.”

Simultaneous with their high-rise condos above North Michigan Avenue, the Balyasnys have had terrestrial homes in Chicago. In 2011, they bought a Lincoln Park house for a little over $4.5 million and sold it in 2020 at a loss of nearly half a million dollars. In 2017, Elona Balyasny and a legal trust paid $3.5 million for a house in the northern Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, according to the Cook County Clerk, and still own it.