Billionaire Ken Griffin: 'We are more and more in a winner-take-all world'

Screenshot YouTube/Milken Institute

Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of high-frequency trading firm Citadel, says that he and everyone else on Wall Street are "more and more in a winner-take-all world."

He made these comments in a rare one-on-one session at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

This idea was a theme in two parts of what he was saying to host Anthony Scaramucci.

For one, he meant "winner-take-all" in terms of talent. He — like fellow hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, who spoke at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles last week — believes that the hunt for talent is as difficult as ever.

"The one constant is that it's really hard to recruit people to any organization ... The war for talent is a constant and it's going to be constant for the rest of my career," he said.

Griffin is so aggressive about this that the night Enron went bankrupt, he said he had people on the ground scooping up one of the company's teams immediately.

The other way this winner-take-all tenet has become a part of Griffin's business is in his trading strategy. He explained that he's looking for the No. 1 asset in every asset class. He's not trying to find value in things the market undervalues — he just wants No. 1.

Of course, so do a great many other market participants.

NOW WATCH: How hedge fund legend John Paulson built an empire off the 2008 financial crisis