Castleton’s ambitions may not stop there, especially as banks from Barclays Plc to JPMorgan Chase & Co. scale back commodity trading. The company’s presentation says its main interests are assets in “global power generation, North American upstream natural gas, and Asian and South American midstream energy assets.”

While Castleton has begun to hire metals traders, electricity and gas are what Reed knows best. After starting his career at Enron in Houston, he later moved to American Electric Power Co., where he was head of trading.

Reed helped found hedge fund Saracen Energy Partners, which managed $1.4 billion by the time he left in 2007. He then joined Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy, becoming CEO a year later. The company became Castleton in January 2013, after the management takeover by Reed and Dubin, who is chairman. It is named for Dubin’s ranch near Gunnison, Colorado.

Reed served in the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment as a helicopter crew chief from 1988 to 1990. After returning to college, he was reactivated for a stint in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, and returned to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh summa cum laude in mathematics in 1993. He earned his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995.

Poaching Managers

“Bill has a rare combination of skills: he understands risk and he understands people,” said Stuart Staley, head of commodities at Citigroup Inc. in London, who started his career with Reed at Enron in the mid-1990s. “He is both a good trader and also a good manager.”

Reed has got the attention of his peers as Castleton extends its business. He hired Shameek Konar, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who was until recently chief investment officer at Mercuria, and Peter Sellars, a 20-year commodity veteran who ran JPMorgan’s metals business.

Invested Partners

Management controls 17 percent of Castleton, with investors owning the rest, according to the internal presentation. Those include Timothy Barakett, founder and former chairman and CEO of hedge fund Atticus Capital LP. Families backing Castleton include the Oppenheimers, who founded Anglo American Plc a century ago; the Belfers, who built a fortune in oil; and the Fribourgs, who sold the grain trading arm of their Continental Grain Co. business to Cargill Inc. in 1999.

Josh Steiner, head of industry verticals at Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a non-executive director.