His new Falckon Capital, betting on UK natural gas and European power, emissions, coal and oil, has attracted one investor so far, Mr Verhaar said yesterday in an interview in the news service Bloomberg.

He started at Cargill in 1987 as a cocoa trader and worked for Goldman Sachs and Nuon before joining Deutsche Bank in London in 2000, advancing to managing director for gas and power trading. Mr Verhaar joined Ospraie’s biggest commodities fund in March 2008, six months before it closed in September last year.

Mr Verhaar’s energy investments at Ospraie gained 15 per cent net of fees while he was there, he said. “We’re going to re-establish the track record of 2008 with Ospraie to get some additional investors through the door,” he was quoted as saying.

Investors are returning to energy and commodity funds after withdrawing record amounts last year during the credit crunch.