When Hurricane Katrina touched down in the Southeast U.S. last year, little did a former college football star realize that he had been punted a problem he’d have trouble fielding. And so, A.R. Thane Ritchie’s Ritchie Capital Management finds itself in the unenviable position of selling off the assets of its flagship fund, the Ritchie Capital Multi-Strategy Fund, after failing to recover from the financial damage caused by the hurricane, when it flattened oil and gas trades. Ritchie’s fate may not be unusual, given recent blowups, but his fund struggled with 2% return in a strategy in which its peers were enjoying 14%. The New York Times reports that the move to sell the fund for an estimated $1 billion comes after the Geneva, Ill.-based firm tried furiously to hold on to investors who were looking to exit with a restructuring plan – approved by investors – that gave them option to keep their money locked up for three years or to convert their investment into debt, which the firm would then repay in two years. Part of the plan involved moving assets into side pockets, a proposal that reportedly angered investors and had them threatening to pull $1 billion of their money. According to the Times, despite investor approval of the plan, the firm further consulted with some of its customers, and ultimately decided it was "impractical" to keep the fund going, and started liquidating. That has reduced total assets from about $3 billion to $750 million. This comes just a month after Ritchie pulled the plug on its energy fund. Under terms of the proposed sale to the heretofore unnamed buyer, Ritchie would still manage its private equity investments, put into a side pocket last year, and which account for about 20% of the multi-strategy fund.