Vega Asset Management, a hedge fund with some USD7.5 billion in assets under management, has hired Julian Barrowcliffe, former global head of commodity derivatives at Bank of America, in a move widely seen as a precursor to launching a commodity trading operation. Details of the strategy could not be determined by press time. Barrowcliffe and Jon Berg, chief executive at Vega Asset Management (USA) in New York, declined comment.
Vega, which also has offices in Madrid, is joining a growing number of hedge funds jumping into the energy markets to fill the void left by Enron's collapse.
A senior energy trader at a U.S. hedge fund welcomed the development, provided Vega will not simply be a price-taker. "What we'd like to see is a whole slew of market makers coming in," he comments, noting that liquidity has picked up noticeably in the last 12 months as a result of new entrants starting piling into the market.
Barrowcliffe, who left BofA last year, was previously a managing director at Cinergy Capital and Trading in Greenwich, Conn., and prior to that a director of global commodity derivatives at Merrill Lynch.
