The Children’s Investment Fund co-founder Patrick Degorce is setting up his own hedge fund.

Degorce, who retired from TCI in January, hopes to raise up to US$1 billion for the new venture, The Wall Street Journal reports. The fund will trade global equities.

Degorce played a major role in TCI’s financial services investments, including its highly-publicized activist battled with Dutch banking giant ABN Amro and Deutsche Börse. But he and TCI chief Christopher Hohn butted heads on several matters, including the size of TCI. Degorce, apparently, was not alone in that: Fellow TCI founding partner Snehal Amin quit in May with plans to strike out on his own next year, and the firm’s Asian chief, John Ho, left the firm in April.

Prior to co-founding TCI, Degorce worked at Merrill Lynch and served in the French navy. The timing of his new fund’s launch seems to be a result of a non-compete agreement with TCI, which expired yesterday.