(Bloomberg) -- Odey Asset Management has liquidated a commodities-focused hedge fund run by portfolio manager Henry Steel and personally backed by its founder Crispin Odey. 

The London-based firm has shuttered the Odey Concentrated Natural Resources Fund after the money pool suffered losses tied to its large Russian positions last year and failed to raise assets, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

A spokesman for the firm declined to comment. 

The hedge fund, which had $10 million under management at the end of 2022, lost 20% last year after it marked the Russian bets to zero, according to Steel’s year-end client letter seen by Bloomberg. Steel started the fund in 2019 with money from Odey and some external investors.

“2022 was a hugely frustrating year overall with Russian Central Bank regulation preventing the trading of a substantial part of the fund following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and our subsequent marking the positions to zero,” he wrote in the letter. “Whilst these equities continue to trade in Russia, and for investors deemed ‘friendly’ to Russia, this turned 2022 into what was unfortunately a challenging year for the strategy.”

The fund joins a growing list of hedge funds to shutter as investors turn their focus on large and diversified money pools run by multiple portfolio managers. More than 3,200 hedge funds have closed over the past five years, far exceeding launches, according to data from HFR.

Steel’s fund, which ran a concentrated portfolio of equities and was once the firm’s hottest offering, failed to gather assets and gain scale since opening to external investors in 2019, leading to the firm’s decision to close it, the person added.

The fund manager joined Odey Asset Management in 2015 as an analyst covering mining, oil, gas, power and other utilities. He previously worked at Rio Tinto Plc as well as Marathon Asset Management and GLG Partners.

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