Ags

Significant talent moves

Talent search and competitive intelligence specialists

We begin our summary of the latest people moves in Ags with the news that Marcelo Martins has been named MD-Regions at Cofco International in Geneva, promoted after a year as its Global Head-Oilseeds Division. Previously Marcelo acted as regional MD for EMEA business. He was Director-Global Markets for Nidera in Rotterdam until 2010. By the time of Nidera’s acquisition by Cofco in 2017 he had become MD-Asia and then Exec VP-Asia-Pacific.

Targray has added James Spillard to its newly opened EU biodiesel trading desk in Geneva. The business is led by head biodiesel trader Vincent Cariou, who joined from Cargill in February this year. James also can point to past Cargill links, having traded soya there until joining Bunge in 2017 to be a senior trader in Amsterdam.

Thanks to Kerem Ulgen for giving us an entry from Turkey for this section. Kerem joins Turkish trading house Hasat Foreign Trade as Marketing Manager from being an ECTP grain trader in Geneva. Originally, a trading traineeship at Bunge Istanbul had been followed by a junior trader position in Bunge’s corn products business.

Gabriel Alonso is joining the juice platform of Louis Dreyfus Company as Manager-Futures Trading and Customer Development. It is the latest in a long line of job titles at LDC for Gabriel, starting in 2006 with Oilseeds Trader in São Paulo. Along the way have been placements in India and Southern Africa, culminating with his transfer now to Florida.

Infographic

*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.

AGS infographic

*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.

In a new all-world operational structure at Bunge that replaces its former region-by-region basis, Christos Dimopoulos is made President-Global Supply Chains and Raul Padilla is now in charge of crop handling and processing as President-Global Operations. A further appointment is of John Neppl as CFO. Christos Dimopoulos became President-Agribusiness as recently as October 2018 upon the retirement of Brian Thomsen. Until then he had served as Senior VP-Global Grains/Oilseeds. Before joining Bunge in 2004, Christos worked in Europe and the United States with Tradigrain and Intrade Risk Management. Raul Padilla previously was CEO of Bunge South America, having been MD-Bunge Global Agribusiness and CEO-Bunge Product Lines since 2010. He is also a former CEO of Bunge Argentina.

We salute Léon Schmidt-Lebuhn for becoming Senior Corn Trader for GrainCorp in Hamburg. When Agribusiness Manager Europe for his previous employer Ingredion Germany, his role included corn procurement and sales of starch. That was after more than three years as Head of Trade-oilseeds, oils & meals at Getreide AG/Power Oil Rostock and four years being a Senior Manager-Oilseeds at Alfred C. Toepfer International.

Glencore Agriculture in Western Australia has brought in Matt Stenhouse as Grain Merchant by recruiting him from AGvise Management Consultants of Perth. Matt’s résumé also shows he is an ex-business relationship manager for Australia’s largest co-operative and grain exporter, CBH Group.

France’s largest farming co-op group, InVivo, sold its 50% share in British arable marketing business Gleadell in February this year, giving 100% ownership to Archer Daniels Midland. That has now led to the merging of ADM feed grain interests in the UK and the appointment of David Sheppard and Graham Atkinson as co-MD of the newly formed ADM Agriculture. David was Gleadell’s trading director and then MD. Graham managed feed materials importer ADM Arkady.

Manager of Origination and Marketing for ADM Rice is the new job title of Andres Garcia. It relocates him to New York from Florida, where he was Trading Director of AgTrade in specialty grains. Between 2011-mid 2018, Andres had been regional trading director of the rice division at Ameropa North America.

ADM also reports that Christopher Boerm has added the title of President-Grain to his current capacity as President of ADM’s transportation group. Christopher joined ADM in 1991 and was previously president of grain from 2014 to 2016. He had also been VP/GM of Eastern grain and corn processing origination and a senior merchandising manager for corn processing.

Appointment of co-MDs for the newly formed ADM Agriculture

Nils Krage has been elevated to the board of directors of VA Intertrading in Austria. A former Director-International Grain and VP for the EMEA region at Viterra in Geneva, Nils has also more recently been the Hamburg-based MD of Interbrau and of GrainCom.

At COFCO International in India, Rupali Jindal was Head of India Research-Grains and Oilseeds and an analyst of global markets for vegetable oils. That was after doing vegetable oil and grains demand research for Noble Resources both in India and in Switzerland. Now she is at Bunge in Singapore. Her new job: Senior Research Analyst-Asia oils.

S&P Global Platts has added Victoria Sinitsyna to its London team as Senior Grains Analyst. Victoria was Quality Manager in the grain laboratory of Cotecna Ukraine and later moved to the UK, becoming Senior Analyst working on crop models and forecasts for Thomson Reuters --- her PhD at Odessa State Environmental University had involved modeling influences on grain crop seed germination.

Grains and oilseeds analyst Laure Montandon is named the new Senior Manager-Data Science for Bunge Geneva, moving up from being senior global analyst on vegetable oils and biodiesel. Laure was in Rotterdam previously, joining Nidera Seeds as an analyst and rising to Research Manager for grain and oilseed markets.

Newly at Singapore oilseed crop products joint venture JOil as CEO, Vasanth Subramanian joins from being COO of the Invenio Asset Management arm of Olam. For six years before that, Vasanth had been Global Head of Olam’s edible oils division. JOil, which has backers including Temasek and Toyota Tsusho as well as Tata Chemicals and Wuthelam, is focused currently on developing the oilseed plant called Jatropha, already well-known in rural India as a source of biodiesel.

WE ARE CO-HOSTING THE 2019 GENEVA COMMODITIES SOIREE WITH ALESSANDRO SANOS AND ALL OUR FRIENDS AT REFINITIV LATER THIS MONTH!