Two men set on creating one of the world’s leading commodities trading houses got a little closer to their goal on Wednesday.
The Mercuria Energy Group, a privately held trading house founded by two former Wall Street oil traders, agreed on Wednesday to buy JPMorgan Chase’s physical commodities arm for $3.5 billion. Mercuria, begun in 2004 by the two traders, Marco Dunand and Daniel Jaeggi, was already one of the four leading independent commodity traders in the world.
The pair worked at various firms for years before deciding to go it alone in 2004. Mercuria started out with a focus on oil trading, but has since expanded to other products and assets, including coal and infrastructure. It owns a stake in an iron ore product supplier in Malaysia, for example, and minority interests in companies building oil infrastructure in China.
Oil, however, remains the company’s core focus.
Mr. Dunand and Mr. Jaeggi met as university students in Geneva, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, and later went on to trade oil at Goldman Sachs. At one point, the pair became known as Bambi and Godzilla for their good cop/bad cop routine on the trading floor, according to the article.
A representative for Mercuria could not be reached immediately for comment on Wednesday.
From the start, it appears the pair was bent on building Mercuria into a global commodities enterprise. The company’s name derives from Mercury, the Roman god of merchants, commerce and trade, according to one report.
Since it began, the company has built up an army of energy traders around the world. According to Mercuria’s website, the company now employs more than 1,000 people in 28 countries, and conducts trading in more than 50 nations.
Mercuria had $98 billion in turnover in 2012, according to its website, more than double the figures reported in 2010.
