The Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), named Energy Transition Partners, will list in Amsterdam and focus on investments in companies involved in efforts to decarbonise the world's energy mix, the bank said.

Hayward will be chief executive of the firm.

SPACs are shell companies that raise funds through an initial public offering to take a private company public through a merger at a later date.

They are the latest craze in capital markets with record amounts raised in the last year.

Hayward left BP in 2010 following the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster and became chairman of Glencore.

(Reporting By Lawrence White)