Three London-based SAC Capital Advisors LP portfolio managers agreed to join rival hedge fund Balyasny Asset Management. SAC employees are said to be departing following the closure of the firm's UK office.

Wall Street Journal, quoting a Balyasny spokesman, said Massimo Amati, Stanislas de Caumont and Robert Harris will start working at Balyasny in London in January. The hedge fund also has offices in New York and Chicago and manages roughly $4 billion in assets.

Amati and de Caumont both joined SAC in 2012 and managed macro strategy portfolios with $200 million to $250 million of capital. Harris joined the hedge fund in 2008 from UBS and managed a stock portfolio focused on business services and leisure-industry companies, the report said.

Other London-based SAC portfolio managers and analysts are in discussions with a handful of investment firms about jobs. WSJ, citing sources, said the investment firms SAC employees had been talking with includes American hedge fund Moore Capital Management LP.

SAC's decision to shut its European office down is part of a broader effort to restructure and shrink the business following a record insider trading settlement with the US government. In October, the US hedge fund told its staff it planned to close the London-based office by the end of 2013, the report said.