Stanley Fink remains a hot commodity. Although the former deputy chairman and CEO of London-based alternative-investment firm Man Group — the biggest publicly traded fund of hedge funds — made a determined effort to retire this summer, his friends wouldn’t let him. Barraged with job offers from hedge fund firms large and small, Fink, 51, abruptly abandoned his plans to become a full-time philanthropist and threw himself back into the corporate fray just as the financial crisis took a turn for the worse. In mid-September, Fink resurfaced as the newly minted CEO of London-based International Standard Asset Management, a commodities trading firm that specializes in gold and global macro strategies. CEO is a familiar title for Fink, who wore it for seven of his 21 years at Man, but the scale of ISAM’s business is a far cry from that of the global operation he left behind. That suits the...