NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (>> Goldman Sachs Group Inc) has hired London-based oil marketer Roy Golender as vice president of energy sales from Barclays Plc (>> Barclays PLC), a company spokesman said on Wednesday.

At Barclays, Golender spent four years in commodity derivatives sales, according to his LinkedIn profile. A Barclays spokeswoman declined to comment.

Goldman Sachs has affirmed its commitment to commodities trading even as other banks have left the sector or scaled back their activities in the face of public and regulatory scrutiny.

Banks that are remaining in commodity derivatives have been hiring as others retreat. Barclays was one of the top five banks in the global commodities business before it began reducing its activities earlier this year.

By contrast, Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn made the rounds in Washington in May, meeting with U.S. lawmakers and regulators from the Federal Reserve to press the case for the bank's commodities business.

In January, the Federal Reserve issued a white paper detailing its concerns with banks' involvement in storing, transporting and trading environmentally sensitive commodities such as crude oil.

Days later, in an earnings call, Goldman Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz described the business as "too important" to its clients to give up.

Golender's hiring was first reported by SparkSpread, a financial industry newsletter. SparkSpread also noted that Goldman has made two other commodity-related hires in the last two months.

(Reporting by Anna Louie Sussman; Editing by Jessica Resnick-Ault and Lisa Von Ahn)

By Anna Louie Sussman

Stocks treated in this article : Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Barclays PLC
Valeurs citées dans l'article : Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Barclays PLC