HOUSTON — A billionaire Texas hedge fund manager who was once a star trader at Enron has announced he has decided to retire — at age 38.
John Arnold, who has an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion, said in a letter to investors that he was closing the Centaurus Energy Master Fund in order to “pursue other interests,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
In the letter, he said the fund had performed “better than I could have hoped for or imagined” with returns on investments consistently high, “often in triple digits.”
Arnold was a major force behind the rapid rise of energy trader Enron in the 1990s and he reportedly received the largest bonus the company ever handed to an employee.
After Enron spectacularly went bust in 2001, Arnold assembled some its top traders at his fund. Like most hedge funds, Centaurus was highly secretive about its investments but it did make headlines when it made close to $1 billion after betting that gas prices would fall in 2006.
Arnold, a father of three young children, is expected to now focus on philanthropic work with his wife Laura, a Yale-educated lawyer who sits on the boards of a number of Houston charities.