London, June 12: Nathaniel Rothschild emphasised his status as one of the most powerful brokers in the booming commodities market with his plan to raise £1 billion in just 11 days.

The financier has assembled a cast of oil industry and City heavyweights — including the former BP chief executive Tony Hayward — to launch Vallares, a company that will buy assets in the oil and gas sector.

Vallares announced its intention to float on Thursday and expects to close its fundraising by June 20, an unusually short period in which to attract so much money.

Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty, is hoping to mimic the success of Vallar, a mining investment vehicle he set up last year, which raised £707 million.

Rothschild, 39, previously ran a New York-based hedge fund called Atticus, but this was closed to new money in 2009 after suffering heavy losses during the financial crisis.

He has since shifted his focus to natural resources and has numerous interests in the sector in addition to Vallar and Vallares. He is the chairman of the advisory board of Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium producer, and a director of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold miner.

Rothschild was also one of the few private individuals to invest in Glencore before the commodity trader’s flotation last month. “Everyone is watching Rothschild now. He’s where the money is,” one mining analyst said.

Rothschild plans to use the money raised by Vallares to engineer a reverse merger with an oil or gas producer. Vallares will target emerging market and preferably family-owned firms valued at between £3 billion and £8 billion.

The owners of these businesses will gain a large holding in a London-listed company, benefiting from the corporate governance and access to capital provided by a presence on the stock exchange.

In return, Vallares will hope to gain a discounted stake in a company operating in the lucrative oil market.

Rothschild and his team at Vallar were able to acquire a 25 per cent stake in PT Bumi, an Indonesian coal producer, within ten months of its flotation. The reverse merger is expected to be completed within the next week and Vallar will change its name to Bumi and join the ranks of the FTSE’s all-share index.

Rothschild has brought in a new team to help launch Vallares, including Hayward and Julian Metherell, the former head of Goldman Sachs UK.

Hayward, who left BP last year in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will lead the search for potential acquisition targets after the flotation. The founders have put £100 million into the venture, the majority of which is understood to have come from Rothschild.

Hayward said, “Vallar is a proven success and it is clear that the concept applies equally well in the oil and gas sector. We will have the cash, access to funds and the capability to unlock value where the current owners have neither the capital nor technical expertise to develop the assets.”

The company will be overseen by a board of directors that include several respected City figures. The chairman will be Rodney Chase, the former chairman of Petrofact and deputy CEO of BP.