Vitol Cuts Ties With Hedge Fund Trader

Oil trading giant Vitol Group has parted ways with an employee who traded for its hedge fund after his trades raised eyebrows with regulators.

Andrew Serotta was asked to leave the Dutch-Swiss firm, The Wall Street Journal reports. Serota, an oil trader based in Houston, made trades for Vitol’s internal hedge fund.

Last year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reclassified Serotta’s trades as “noncommercial” or speculative, although neither he nor the firm were accused of wrongdoing. A Vitol spokesman told the Journal that Serotta’s departure had nothing to do with the reclassification and that the firm did not consider his trades inappropriate. The spokesman instead said that Serotta’s strategy was deemed a poor fit for the firm.