The fund, scheduled for launch in October, is reported to have taken commitments of up to USD 3 billion in assets.

Eton Park will be a multi-strategy hedge fund with a US focus, but will also have a European element. It will cover several asset classes and will required investors to commit their money for three to five years.

Mindich has set up offices in New York and earlier this year he hired Stuart Hendel, a managing director in Morgan Stanley's prime brokerage division, as chief operating officer.

He has also brought in Erland Karlsson, former head of proprietary trading at Goldman Sachs in London, Anand Desai, a long/short portfolio manager from SAB Capital, and Isaac Corre, an event-orientated portfolio manager from Scoggin Capital.

Mindich helped shape Goldman's equities business in the late 1990s market boom. He was the bank's senior strategy officer and became its youngest partner in 1994 at the age of 27.

In January 2003, he became senior strategy officer and chairman of the bank's global strategy committee. He retired from the bank at the end of last year.