Goldman Sachs has told clients that Mark Carhart and Ray Iwanowski, managing directors and co-heads of its quantitative investment strategy team, have left the bank along with another member of their team, Giorgio De Santis, according to the Financial Times.

Until the US subprime credit crisis in the summer of 2007 Mr Carhart and Mr Iwanowski were successful in employing quantitative investment strategies, which rely on complex algorithms to dictate buying and selling decisions.

The trio took over the Global Alpha fund in 1997 and helped increase its size from less than $100 million to $10 billion in assets by 2006.

But the credit crisis brought massive losses, said at the time to be as much as 30 per cent.