By Shariq Khan and Robert Harvey
NEW YORK/LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Gunvor’s new CEO, Gary Pedersen, stressed it was business as usual for the Swiss-based commodities trader during a Reuters interview on Tuesday, a day after he took over as part of an abrupt management buyout of co-founder Torbjorn Tornqvist.
Monday’s announcement of the management buyout took many by surprise and marked the end of Tornqvist’s 25-year leadership of Gunvor, while making Pedersen the first American to lead a major Swiss commodities trading firm since billionaire Marc Rich, who was indicted on tax evasion and other charges.
Gunvor is scrambling to smooth over its relationship with the U.S. after the Treasury dubbed it “the Kremlin’s puppet”, and torpedoed its buyout of sanctioned Russian major Lukoil’s international assets. That statement raised concerns that Gunvor’s creditors and business partners could break ties with it.
“All of our core banks that we were actually signed with are all with us,” Pedersen said by phone, adding that the company’s counterparties were also working with it normally.
GUNVOR HEADQUARTERS STAYS IN GENEVA
Pedersen, who joined Gunvor about a year ago after overseeing refined products trade for hedge fund Millennium Management since 2022, said the trading house will remain headquartered in Geneva. He added there were no plans to rebrand Gunvor, named after Tornqvist’s mother.
“My goal right now is to just be as little disruptive as possible,” Pedersen said, noting he will split his time between the U.S. and Europe and highlighting that he has spent half his career outside the United States.
Gunvor’s performance has been “pretty good” in the second half of this year, Pedersen said, stressing the company has a strong team of traders despite some turnover earlier this year.
Oil-focused traders have endured a rough start to this year as a sharp slump in commodity prices caught some off guard, and profits shrank from recent years’ record levels. Gunvor in particular struggled with some misplaced crude oil bets last year and lost some of its most senior trading executives, including its global head of crude.
(Reporting by Shariq Khan in New York and Robert Harvey in London; Editing by Rod Nickel)
Comments