Ags
Significant talent moves
Talent search and competitive intelligence specialists
Our summary of highlighted Ags moves of recent months begins with the news that Geovane Consul will be CEO and Mario Lindenhayn will be executive chairman of BP Bunge Bioenergia, a new 50:50 joint-venture bioenergy company agreed between Bunge and BP to take shape in Brazil by the end of 2019. At present, Geovane is the current head of Bunge’s Brazilian biofuels business and Mario is BP’s CEO-Biofuels and head of country for Brazil. A further appointment will see Marcus Schlösser, currently CFO for BP Biofuels, become the new venture’s CFO. BP Bunge Bioenergia is expected to establish its headquarters in São Paulo.
Wietsche du Preez moves within Geneva to be Head of Grains for Avere Commodities after being Trader/Head-Global Grains for ETG since 2016. He’s ex-LDC, having spent almost 12 years there in various roles and locations that have included trading maize in South Africa and wheat in Kansas City, also managing all company grain activities in sub-Saharan Africa and eventually transferring to Switzerland to be Senior Platform Trader-Grains.
Chicago-based futures brokerage and clearing firm R.J. O’Brien includes ags products in its wide offering and operates offices in locations including London, Dubai and Beijing. It has now started new affiliate R.J. O’Brien France, where Jérôme Jourquin, most recently Head of the commodity/clearing desk for GFI Securities, had already joined the affiliate as Senior VP and institutional broker.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
Former Cofco grain trader Ilya Tyuvildin is now Grain/Oilseeds Trader at Inerco Trade, the company established in Nyon/Geneva as a subsidiary of Ukraine’s Kernel Holding to trade in sunflower-seed oil, meal and grain. Originally a Barclays Wealth Geneva analyst, Ilya moved to LDC in 2014 and became responsible for its grain origination in the Black Sea area before joining Cofco to trade Black Sea wheat and barley.
GP Global Group (the former Gulf Petrochem) in Geneva has made Cem Bogusoglu its Global Head-Pulses after recruiting him from Alegrow, where he had been Commodity Trader dealing with pulses and oilseeds. Cem was once MD of Arba-Tiryaki Grain & Pulse Industry Co. in Turkey and an area director for Africa for Tiryaki Agro Foods, later switching to Al-Ghurair Foods in Dubai as business development manager. He is a serving board member of the Global Pulse Confederation, which will hold its next conference in Dubai in April 2020.
Giacomo Galli is Bunge’s latest recruit as Commodities Trader, moving to its Geneva desk from a portfolio manager role at KLI Asset Management. Among previous employments where Giacomo has traded commodities have been with Noble Group, Cofco Agri and ECTP.
In the Netherlands, trader Floris Scheurleer moves from Cofco Rotterdam to Kraft Heinz to become global group lead in agricultural commodities. The group said recently that it spends over US$ 100 million a year on buying the commodity ingredients for its food products. Floris has a trading record that also covers past posts at Cargill and IMC.
Netherlands-based Veramaris says it has completed the recruitment of six “seasoned professionals” to accelerate the market launch of its marine algal oil. Veramaris is owned jointly by DSM and Evonik. Back last December, Ian Carr became Director-Global Business Development after joining from Cargill. A team of regional directors of business development has now been assembled which includes Christian Martin and Gaelle Husser with global responsibilities and Steven Severino taking care of new business, while Jorge Torres covers Latin America and Lalen Dogan is for Asia-Pacific.
Norbert Harringer, a technical chemist from Upper Austria, becomes a new member of the management board of sugar/starches/fruit juice group Agrana in Vienna, with effect from 1st September 2019. He will take certain responsibilities currently held by CEO Johann Marihart, particularly involving production co-ordination and investments.
Bunge and BP enter into bioenergy joint venture
In the news...
Glencore Agriculture has joined the project to modernise global agricultural commodity trading that already involves ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Cofco International and Louis Dreyfus Company. Originally in October 2018 the initiative featured four companies, with Cofco joining soon after. Provided regulatory approval is obtained, it aims to launch a digital platform in 2020 for the automatic post-trade execution of international grain and oilseed shipments in which both blockchain and AI will play a part.
At ADM, Greg Morris has moved across from being President-Oilseeds to head the newly combined ADM business unit Ag Services & Oilseeds, that also covers its grain trading.
For Clark Gill, the move is into The Redwood Group in Kansas as Senior Merchandiser-Specialty Products. From 2011 to 2016 Clark was merchandising grains into Asia for Scoular. He stayed in Minneapolis when changing to a grain export trading position with Stone Arch Commodities, but then relocated, first to California and then to Denver for Western Milling.
Meanwhile Paul Stam has become Commercial Lead at Bunge Netherlands, managing its soybean crushing as well as trade flows in maize, wheat and soybeans. Risk Manager for sugar trading and Senior Trader in soybean products have been among Paul’s past positions at Bunge.
Commodity is partnering the Global Grain Geneva event that is taking place between 12-14 November. And of course our CEO was not going to miss an opportunity to organise a pre-event 5k for any delegates that wish to join him.
Now in her ninth year with Cargill, Ece Celik has relocated to Amsterdam in her new role of Senior Trader for rapeseed oil in EMEA markets. Since 2015 she had been trading oilseeds for Cargill Australia in Melbourne.
Tian Meng Hong is made Director of Operations-Asia Pacific at the Singapore office of US agri co-op CHS. Most recently a senior consultant at Asia Pacific Exchange and MD at Singapore-based ags exporter Hartley, Tian is a former director of China grain/oilseed operations for Toepfer International Asia.
Back in April this year, Stéphane Bernhard left French agricultural co-operatives group InVivo after five years as MD/Head of Trading for its grains unit. Now Stéphane is to be found at Export Trading Group (ETG) in Amsterdam as their Global Head Trader for exchange-traded commodities. Earlier he had been a founding partner in businesses Ibericafe, Forecastis and BG Amethyst Capital after spending 12 years with LDC, including trading grains in Germany and being MD/Head Trader of Louis Dreyfus Spain and Portugal.
From being Head of Credit Risk-Commodities for ED&F Man and formerly its commodity risk manager covering coffee and sugar, Falk Widmann moves to Cofco International in Geneva as Global Head of Credit Risk. His past jobs have included Business Unit Controller for airline caterer LSG Sky Chefs and Assistant Financial Controller in Germany for hotels group IHG.
Newly made Senior Risk Manager at ED&F Man in London is Darren Malone. While at Olam previously he was a multi-commodity trader and worked on developing data-driven systematic trading strategies.
Rounding up the latest people moves, Daniele Marobin becomes a systematic trader at Avere Commodities in Geneva following his move there from ETG. Also in Switzerland he’s been a prop trader for ED&F Man and has traded derivatives on behalf of Noble Group.
WE’RE RUNNING A SURVEY TO FIND POSSIBLE WAYS TO IMPROVE THE BASIS OF REMUNERATION FOR TRADING-TEAM ANALYSTS AND STRATEGISTS.
This is merely a snapshot of some of the recent people moves and associated trends observed by our Ags research team at Commodity.
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