Commodities moves: Strange steps down from NZX

Strange steps down from NZX, BlueMountain appoints infrastructure portfolio manager, and more

Patrick Strange, a member of the board of directors of the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX), will step down by the exchange’s 2019 annual meeting. Strange has served as a director since April 2015. He has contributed to the development of the exchange’s strategy, energy and dairy markets, and the recent divestment of its non-core businesses. He also served as a member of its audit and risk and clearing committees.

His decision to retire from the NZX board follows his appointment as chair-elect of the Auckland International Airport. He will continue to serve as a director at Chorus, Mercury and Essential Energy in Australia.

Troeller climbs BlueMountain

Asset manager BlueMountain Capital Management has hired Scott Troeller (pictured) as a portfolio manager to handle infrastructure-related private investments, with an initial focus on energy, environmental and telecommunications infrastructure in North America, it said in a statement. Troeller will be based in New York and report to Andrew Feldstein, co-founder and chief investment officer, the firm said. He will be BlueMountain’s first senior investment professional to focus exclusively on infrastructure.

Troeller last worked at Fir Tree Partners, where he was a managing director, focusing on private equity investments. He was also a managing director at Titan Grove Holdings, the private investment arm of Fir Tree’s founders. Prior to Fir Tree, he spent more than a decade at private investment firm VSS, where he was a general partner and member of the executive committee. He began his career at JP Morgan.

BlueMountain also announced Nitin Dewan has joined the firm’s equities team as portfolio manager, primary strategies. He is based in New York and will report to Lance Rosen, who joined BlueMountain as head of equities last year. Before BlueMountain, Dewan was head of event-driven and special situations at BlueMar Capital Management. He has also held roles at Alyeska Investment Group, Blackstone, McKinsey & Company and Shumway Capital Partners.

New managing director for Regions Bank

Ryan Stash has joined Regions Bank in Houston, Texas, as a managing director in the bank’s energy and natural resources group. He will report to the group head, executive managing director Brian Tate. Stash joins from Wells Fargo Securities, where he was involved in event-driven financing and advisory for upstream and midstream clients. Regions Bank said he would cover corporate clients across the energy industry as part of its continuing expansion in the energy and natural resources markets.

StanChart picks mining and metals head

Standard Chartered has named Richard Horrocks-Taylor as global head of metals and mining. Horrocks-Taylor, who started work at the bank’s London office in August, was previously RBC Capital Market’s head of metals and mining for Europe, Africa and the former Soviet Union from 2008 to July this year. He will report to the head of the global industries group, Ananth Venkat.

Before joining RBC in 2006 as head of European metals and mining, he worked as a managing director in corporate finance at the Canadian mining and metals company Hatch.