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Ron Ozer, who worked as a portfolio manager and co-head of U.S.
natural gas trading at Citadel, has launched Statar Capital LLC
to focus on natural gas trades. He worked at Citadel, which
currently manages $30 billion, from July 2015 to April 2017.
Ozer's New York-based fund has raised roughly $140 million in
assets from family offices and institutional clients, the person
who was not authorized to speak publicly about the private
fund's plans said. A spokesman for Statar declined to comment.
Statar is starting to trade at a time the United States is awash
in natural gas and prices are not expected to rise any time
soon.
Other energy trading funds have closed this year amid shrinking
profits and market volatility, including Houston-based Velite
Capital, which was once one of the most-profitable U.S. natural
gas trading shops but began winding down operations two months
ago.
Many commodities-focused hedge funds lost out on trades in
energy betting on higher prices in February, a report from
industry tracker Eurekahedge showed. More intense regulation on
trading, fueled in part of Dodd-Frank legislation, has also
prompted many funds to pull capital from physical commodity
market trading.
Ozer began his career on Wall Street as a natural gas trader at
hedge fund DE Shaw where he worked from 2008 to 2014.
Terrence Brennan joined Ozer as Statar's chief operating officer
from Trajectoire Capital Group where he was also chief operating
officer.
Hedge fund industry returns have been muted over the last years
prompting some big investors to turn their backs on these
portfolios.
Data from Hedge Fund Research shows that fewer hedge funds were
launched in the second quarter of 2018 than a year ago, marking
the lowest number of quarterly launches since shortly after the
financial crisis in the first quarter of 2009.
But data also suggest that fewer hedge funds are going out of
business this year than in past years when the number of
liquidations outpaced the number of launches.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; additional reporting by
Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Editing by Tom Brown)
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