Damien Bombell left JPMorgan Chase a year ago after the largest and most profitable U.S. bank shut its group trading commodities for the company’s own account. Now chief investment officer of his own hedge fund, he’s hiring four people before accepting money from investors next month.

“I can’t say there’s anything I miss about banking,” said Bombell, who plans to have $200 million under management at the Strand Global Macro Fund in Zug, Switzerland. “I have more freedom.”

Traders in energy, metals and agriculture are opening or joining hedge funds after leaving financial firms that cut more than 233,000 jobs this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Departures of commodity traders from banks probably rose 10 percent this year, according to Commodity Search Partners, a recruiter in Brighton, England. Pay for that group will drop 24 percent on average, estimates Options Group, a recruitment firm in New York.

Financial firms are losing people as U.S. and European regulators seek to limit holdings across raw materials and ban proprietary trading that uses shareholders’ cash. Slowing economic growth and Europe’s debt crisis may crimp earnings and limit compensation for traders.

“Banks are particularly vulnerable at the moment to losing people,” said Peter Henry, head of front-office search at Commodity Search Partners, which recruits about 40 commodity traders each year. “Increasing regulations are forcing banks to defer more pay in stock as opposed to cash as well as constraining the traders’ ability to trade.”

Commodity hedge funds attracted $8.66 billion from investors in the year through November, up 11 percent from the end of 2010 and above the hedge-fund industry average of 1.9 percent, according to eVestment HFN, based in New York. Assets under management at commodity funds after their performance rose $4.95 billion to $82.7 billion through November, the research company estimates. The funds lost 3.4 percent on average in the period, according to the Newedge Commodity Trading Index.

George Taylor, the former head of global commodity proprietary trading at Credit Suisse Group, started a hedge fund in February. It now has more than $1 billion of assets, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. Gil Saiz, who spent a decade at Goldman Sachs, closed his Vector Commodity Fund to money from new investors in May after raising $600 million, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Duet Commodities Fund co-managed by Tony Hall, former head of distillates trading at a venture between Credit Suisse and Barr, Switzerland-based Glencore International, said in a letter to investors in November that it returned 27.5 percent in the first 10 months.

Starting a new commodity hedge fund is getting tougher because managers need to comply with more demands from investors, said Marcus Storr, head of hedge funds at Feri Trust in Bad Homburg, Germany.

“You need more money to launch, you need more professional backup,” said Storr, whose company manages about $20.8 billion of assets, including investments in 12 commodity hedge funds. “These are all elements which hadn’t been much cared about before the crisis, and are now so important. That’s why many who want to set up hedge funds these days, they can’t launch.”