War profiteer? Trading firm Trafigura made $7 billion (€6.45 billion) in profit in its 2022 financial year, twice as much as its previous record, in 2021. Covid-19, war in Ukraine… More the planet accuses the blow, the more the traders (the negotiators) cash.
A paradox that hardly moves the Australian Jeremy Weir, boss, since 2014, of this company which is one of the main brokers and charterers of black gold on the planet, whose trading activities are located in Geneva. “We once again mastered extreme market volatility across a wide range of commodities, and delivered exceptional results regardless of market conditions”, he believes.
In the less managerial language of the Swiss NGO Public Eye, which published a report on Thursday, January 19, on the ultra-lucrative business of commodity trading in Switzerland, the finding does not have the same tone. “As the food and energy security of millions of people around the world is at serious risk due to rising food and commodity prices, traders are reaping record profits taking advantage of market disruptions”, says the NGO.
Flow growth
Like its competitor Trafigura, the Vitol group, world number one in oil trading, has also already broken through its own ceiling, with 4.5 billion dollars in profit over the first six months of 2022, against 4.2 billion over the twelve months of 2021. The Gunvor company announces for its part, for the first half of 2022, profits multiplied by four compared to those of the first half of 2021.
It was co-founded by the Russian oligarch Gennadi Timtchenko, a close friend of Vladimir Putin who is on all Western sanctions lists and has long provided good Geneva society with his largesse through Neva, his wife’s philanthropic foundation. . The man had officially sold his shares in Gunvor to his Swedish business partner, Torbjörn Törnqvist, shortly after the annexation of Crimea by Russia in the spring of 2014.
A giant of raw materials, however, crushes all the others: Glencore (oil, gas, coal, minerals, metals, etc.). According to the FinancialTimesthe group based in Baar, in the mild fiscal climate of the German-speaking micro-canton of Zug (central Switzerland), is “one of the biggest winners from the disruption caused by the war in Ukraine in the commodity markets”. It saw its profits grow by 846% in the first half of 2022 year-over-year, to $12 billion.
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