Reuters – Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and "binding" authority over executive compensation, including the ability to "claw back" money already paid, and he is weighing how and whether to use that power.

Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup Inc included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government’s TARP Program.

Feinberg said he hasn’t looked at Hall’s contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.

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Tags: 100-million, andrew hall, citigroup, citigroup-inc, czar, energy trader, executive compensation, federal government, kenneth feinberg, money, obama, reuters, submissions, tarp

Bloomberg – Erik Verhaar, a former energy trader at Ospraie Management LLC and Deutsche Bank AG, started a hedge fund this week in the Netherlands as investors are returning to commodities.

His new Falckon Capital BV bets on U.K. natural gas and European power, emissions, coal and oil and has attracted one investor so far, Verhaar said yesterday in an interview.

Verhaar, 46, started at Cargill Inc. in 1987 as a cocoa trader and worked for Goldman Sachs Inc. and Nuon NV before joining Deutsche Bank in London in 2000, advancing to managing director for gas and power. He joined Ospraie’s biggest commodities fund in March 2008, six months before it closed in September last year. Verhaar’s energy investments at Ospraie gained 15 percent net of fees while he was there, he said.

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Tags: bets, bv, cargill inc, coal, cocoa, commodities, deutsche bank, deutsche bank ag, emissions, energy trader, energy-investments, falckon, goldman sachs inc, goldman-sachs, hedge fund, management llc, managing director, natural gas, nuon, ospraie-management