Metals & Mining
Significant talent moves
Talent search and competitive intelligence specialists
Taking a glance over to the world of metals and mining, we see that John Levin’s long career in precious metals has reached a new milestone, with his election to the management committee of the Singapore Bullion Market Association. He arrived in Singapore in June, joining the local office of Toronto Dominion Bank as Head of Metal Sales & Trading - APAC, after seven years heading precious metal sales for banking group ANZ in his native Australia. Between 2009 and 2011, he served on the management committee of the London Bullion Market Association whilst in the UK as Head of Precious Metals Sales for HSBC Global Banking and Markets.
Joining the base metals business of Grafton Commodity Trading in London is warehousing specialist Daniel Sweetenham, formerly Director & CCO for metals storage at Engelhart Warehousing. Grafton Commodity Trading --- in which DXT Commodities in Switzerland has held a controlling interest since 2016 --- owns base metals warehousing company Grafton Warehouse Services.
*Based on moves of data scientists tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
*Based on moves of data scientists tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
At the Trafigura office in Singapore, Rendy Soenarso is the new Zinc/Lead Trader after arriving from five years in Hong Kong as Manager of Asia-region sales of zinc, lead and minor metals on behalf of Nyrstar Sales & Marketing. Until 2012, Rendy had been in Singapore handling regional energy origination for Gazprom. Between 2012 and 2014 he dealt in refined metals for MRI Trading’s activities in South-East Asia.
Metals derivatives have been a sweet spot for Sai Cheung (Ivan) Poon since he started working for Cargill as a trader in 2011. Today finds him remaining in Singapore, but branching out to be a Data Scientist for Anglo American. From Cargill he had gone in turn to Awin Resource International and Kyen Resources until heading to Vital Solutions Singapore in 2018 as GM - Derivatives.
Mark Davis becomes CEO of Glencore subsidiary Katanga Mining, to replace Jeff Gerard, under a management services agreement between the companies. Until recently Mark was Executive GM - Operations at base-metals miner MMG in Melbourne. He is also a former manager of BHP Billiton’s aluminium smelting operations in South Africa.
Over to Zug for news of the appointment of former Nyrstar CEO Hilmar Rode to an asset management position in Glencore’s copper division. He has also been made a director of its offshoot Katanga Mining. Hilmar returns to Glencore after spending seven years there until 2014, rising to become Senior Asset Manager in the zinc division.
According to MMG’s CEO Xiaoyu Gao, current Executive GM-Commercial Xu Jiqing steps down from the role in January 2020 to take a senior executive position at China Minmetals Corp in Beijing. China Minmetals is the majority shareholder in MMG. Xu Jiqing was VP/CFO of China Minmetals Non-ferrous Metals Co. between 2005 - 2013 and has also served as a director of some of its subsidiaries since 2009, including MMG South America Management Co.
Oliver Jackman is now part of the metals team at Koch S&T in London. Previously specialising in metals as VP - Commodity Sales for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Mark was at Koch until 2016 before moving to Wells Fargo to be VP in metals sales and trading.
Metals and energy corporate sales for Europe, particularly Germany, is the assignment for Nicolas Koreska in his new job at BNP Paribas in Paris. Nicolas takes on the commodities marketing role on his arrival from Société Générale.
Wrapping up this summary is the confirmation from ECTP that Kevin Mao is its latest Commodity Trader-Metals & Minerals in Singapore. Originally in analyst roles, Kevin first became a metals trader with Credit Suisse in 2010. Then it was off to Macquarie as dry-bulk commodities trader and to Standard Chartered Bank for a Hong Kong position of trading director in iron ore and metals derivatives, until being Singapore-based from 2017 in portfolio management for DRW.
Watch our CEO’s interview with Jan Voetmann, Head of Analytics at Ørsted, here for the inside track on data scientists.
This is merely a snapshot of some of the recent people moves and associated trends observed by our Metals research team at Commodity.
For further information about our intel offering and headhunting capabilities, please make contact with our CEO Jakob Bloch here 