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Large U.K. hedge fund GLG Partners LP, facing the coming departure of one of its key fund managers, has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner Driss Ben-Brahim.

Mr. Ben-Brahim, 42 years old, currently helps oversee emerging-markets trading at Goldman Sachs from London. GLG, which is run by several former Goldman partners, targeted Mr. Ben-Brahim to help it expand its so-called special-situations business, which covers a variety of longer-term investments, including in private companies or less-liquid assets. That will include running the roughly $1.2 billion emerging-markets special-situations fund that is now run by Greg Coffey, the fund manager who is leaving the firm.

GLG said in April that Mr. Coffey, who oversees four funds including the firm’s largest, GLG Emerging Markets Fund, will leave in October. At the beginning of this month, GLG executives placed restrictions limiting the amount of money investors in the firm’s largest fund could withdraw to 10% of the fund’s total assets. GLG executives had said they could see $4 billion of assets leave with Mr. Coffey, but people familiar with the matter say withdrawals so far have been less than half that.

GLG had about $24.6 billion of assets as of the end of March.

Mr. Ben-Brahim, a Moroccan national, joined Goldman in 1996. In 2004, he took over the running of the firm’s global foreign-exchange desk. Since 2006, he has been running Goldman’s emerging-markets investments. He has remained close to Emmanuel Roman, who left Goldman in 2005 to join GLG as co-chief executive. GLG executives expect Mr. Ben-Brahim, who will take a senior role at the firm and steer the firm’s macrotrading strategy, to start his new role in the fall.

Mr. Ben-Brahim declined to comment.

It is the latest in a string of recent hires made by GLG, which has added about 16 investment professionals to its ranks in the past several months.