Thirty senior bankers from Société Généraleâ??s alternative asset management team have left to set up their own hedge fund business. The venture will be backed by an American private equity firm.

The team â?? including the head of SocGenâ??s $12.7bn global hedge funds business, Arié Assayag, and several of his most senior colleagues â?? have left amid growing pressures at French banks to curtail the bonuses of top employees.

Nexar Capital â?? the name for the new hedge fundâ?? will be headed by Mr Assayag, with Eric Attias, the former chief executive of SocGenâ??s New York Asset Management business, as its chief investment officer. The firm will be headquartered in Paris with an office in New York.

Nexar has been backed with seed capital by US private equity firm Aquiline partners â?? set up by Jeffrey Greenberg, the former chairman of Marsh & McLennan, the American insurance group, and son of Hank Greenberg, the former AIG chief.

Alongside a core fund of funds business, Nexar will also run its own specialist volatility hedge fund.

The volatility arbitrage fund, which will be used to diversify clientsâ?? exposures and provide additional protection against severe market disruptions, will be run by a team of traders also poached from SocGen.