NEW YORK (Reuters) - Swiss-based trading house Mercuria has hired Goldman Sachs' former co-head of commodities investment, Shameek Konar, to help manage its global portfolio of energy assets, a source familiar with the firm said on Thursday.
Konar, who joined Goldman Sachs two years ago from Constellation Energy, will hold a similar role at Mercuria, working from Houston, said the source. The move was first reported by SparkSpread.com.
Spokespeople for Goldman Sachs and Mercuria had no comment.
Konar will join group Chief Investment Officer Paul Chivers in managing Mercuria's global array of assets, which includes upstream fields in Canada, coal mines in Indonesia and storage facilities in China.
While more merchant-traders are moving to buy up hard assets as a way to leverage and expand their trading businesses, Wall Street banks are facing a showdown with the U.S. Federal Reserve over whether they can own and operate power plants, storage tanks, metals warehouses and other such assets.
The Fed has long banned commercial banks from owning assets apart from short-term "merchant banking" deals, but Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
(The story was corrected to fix spelling of Chivers in paragraph 4)
(Reporting By Jonathan Leff; editing by Jim Marshall)
