* Financials-focused hedge fund made 9.4 pct in year to end-April
* Founder del Missier ran fund internally with $100 mln
* Firm now employs 12 people
By Maiya Keidan and Anjuli Davies
LONDON, May 9 (Reuters) - A hedge fund firm run by the former co-CEO of Barclays (LON:BARC) investment bank Jerry del Missier and focused on the financial services industry has opened to external capital, del Missier told Reuters.
Del Missier started Copper Street Capital with $100 million of internal capital in 2015, running it out of an office in Maidenhead, a town 30 miles (50 km) west of London. He resigned from Barclays in July 2012, shortly after chief executive Bob Diamond left the bank.
Del Missier worked at Barclays for 15 years, helping Diamond to build up the bank's investment banking franchise before briefly becoming the lender's chief operating officer in June 2012.
Copper Street, which was up 9.4 percent in value in the year to April 30, is now seeking to take its assets to more than $500 million, said del Missier.
The fund looks to profit from anomalies and misperceptions in the financials market.
Hedge funds are broadly moving back into bank stocks after an eight-year hiatus following double-digit returns from a bull market between 2005 and 2007 and shorts positions on banks between 2007 and 2009. firm made a number of hires last year, including Deutsche Bank 's financial institutions analyst Rudi Facchini, a former financials institutions group director at Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn), Massimo Araldi and Beatriz Carrillo from Comac Capital.
Copper Street also added portfolio manager Bruno Duarte from Claren Road Asset Management in 2016.
It employs 12 people, including in a private equity arm of its business. ($1 = 0.7726 pounds)