Our departments

Accounting

Every transaction that takes place in Mercuria ends up in the Accounting team. The team takes care of receipts and payments, accounting for invoices, resolving discrepancies, and bookkeeping. Accounting data is used to prepare accounts for our companies around the world, provide management information, and to prepare our audited Group results.

Administrative

Our Administrative Assistants provide support to specific departments or individuals in all their daily tasks, including scheduling and coordinating meetings, interviews and events and preparing business correspondence.

Analysis

Our Analyst team is studying data and statistics in order to spot trends. They assess this information using advanced methods in statistical analysis, mathematics and computer programming.

Audit

Internal Audit in Mercuria is responsible for managing the interface with our external auditors, for executing the annual audits globally across our 100+ legal entities with a ‘no surprises’ mandate, and for the group internal controls framework, governance and reporting to audit committee.

Back Office

The team is responsible for the entire Group back office derivatives functions (futures, swaps, options, Forex). The team handles the reconciliations of futures positions with Exchanges. They also verifies and issues contracts for OTC derivatives business. Additionally, the team is in charge of swaps OTC collateral management, invoicing and margin calls.

Business Development

Our business development team is constantly seeking for business opportunities and structuration in every market Mercuria is active in.

Communication – Marketing – Public Relations

The Department of Communications focuses on managing Mecuria’s relationship with external audiences. From helping the company tell its story to clients and prospects to providing crisis management and handling social and traditional media relationships, the Department of Communications offers timely support to global Mercuria operations. The team helps communicate Mercuria’s work to the world.

Corporate Responsibility and Compliance

Throughout the global jurisdictions in which Mercuria operates, the compliance team makes sure Mercuria is up to date on evolving regulations, licensing and permits. The team proactively identifies regulatory risks and designs or implements procedures to reduce challenges while complying with all local and international regulations.

Credit Risk

The ability of a counterparty to perform its contractual obligations including payment for delivered product and margin demands are collectively the credit risk taken with each counterparty whom Mercuria trades with. The credit team assess individual companies and transactions to ensure that we have a complete understanding and quantification of this risk, plus the associated implicit cost. The credit team is then tasked with supporting the front offices to maximise their return on credit risk, through proposing contractual clauses and master agreements to improve our netting and offset position, plus the use of risk mitigation through banking and insurance structures.

Demurrage

Demurrage analysts are handling the penalty for exceeding free time allowed for taking delivery of a shipment by the Shipping company, the Buyers or the Sellers. They are monitoring all loading and discharge operations executed on behalf of Mercuria’s group account.

Financial controlling

Our Financial Controlling team provides compliant and analytical figures for Group Management, such as financial reporting, group performance indicators, trading PnL’s and forecasts and projections. They are in charge of Business Reporting and Trading Controlling as well as cost allocation across the Group.

Finance Middle Office (FMO)

Finance Middle Office combines all of Treasury’s, Structured Trade Finance’s, Trade Finance’s and Credit’s modelling, reporting, governance and related middle office functions under a single group. Thus, FMO supports those Finance teams by having streamlined reporting processes, by coordinating the related specific Finance IT developments and more generally by establishing an improved governance and risk management having a clear separation of duties in place between strategy & execution and reporting.

Human Resources

The human resources team is working closely with the Business to provide HR advice and support to managers and employees on a wide range of strategic and operational HR issues, including staffing, employee development and employee relations. The team is also responsible for all payroll & benefits administration as well as for developing and implementing an organization-wide reward strategy.

Investments

Mercuria’s investment team implements and coordinates the asset strategy of the Group and uses its diversified skillset to reinforce the deal-making capabilities of the Group. Mercuria expresses its strategic views on the commodity markets in which it is engaged through its investments—by acquiring physical assets or contracts and allocating risk capital in the most cost-effective and liquid manners. Investments also allow Mercuria to widen its client base and geographical coverage by creating anchor positions through various kinds of partnerships, which improve the Group’s fundamental understanding of the needs of both suppliers and end-users. Through investments, our Group constantly adapts its product offer—whether it is supply-chain, funding or risk-management solutions—to a constantly changing market.

Information Technologies – Development

The team maintains all systems and information technology strategies by managing staff, researching and implementing technological strategic solutions. Our specialists are constantly developping our state-of-the-art ETRM, including all the interfaces between external systems. A dedicated team is responsible for the SAP development.

Information Technologies – Infrastructure

The team maintains all systems and information technology strategies by managing staff, researching and implementing technological strategic solutions. This team focuses on our systems architecture and networks while supporting the users in all their IT requirements.

Legal

Legal is responsible for providing legal services and advice to the company, its divisions and employees. The department office faces a great number of different legal matters, including: business development, contract management, real estate transactions, claims against the company, employment law, sales and leases matters, debt collection, bankruptcy, case prosecution, and many other functions

Office Management – Reception

The Office Management & Reception team ensures the smooth running of the office, with a strong emphasis on the comfort and safety of employees and visitors. As well as being involved in a variety of administrative tasks, the Reception team welcomes colleagues and visitors to the office and takes care of answering the switchboard. Emphasis is on quality and portraying a professional business image for Mercuria.

Operations – Logistics

The Operations department is in charge of movements of all commodities, liquid and solid by various ways of transportation such as vessels, barges, railcar, pipeline, trucks. Operators are a key part of trading decision by giving all information needed such as quantity, quality, forecast for loading or discharging, losses,… Operators are responsible for the completeness and control of the physical and logistical operations of the business.

Quantitative Strategists

The Quantitative Strategists team is responsible for pricing models, risk management tools, and quantitative structuring functions across Mercuria’s businesses.

Risk Management – Corporate

The corporate risk team reports and manages market, financial and operational risks associated with trading commodities across the entire Mercuria Group. It makes sure that our Group maintains its ability to take and manage risks across a diverse business base in a measured, aware and deliberate manner. The team defines, reports and reviews position and VAR limits.

Risk Management – Middle Office

Middle officers maintain constant risk monitoring of trading positions. They are responsible for the physical trade entry in the ETRM systems, secondary cost accruals, daily position monitoring and Profits and Losses reporting. They actively participates in risk management strategies. Middle officers are the first line of defence of the risk and control team.

Shipping – Operations

Our shipping operators are responsible for post fixture operations of vessels. They are managing operations for time charter and voyage charter parties: Their role ranges from purchasing and managing bunker supply, tracking vessels, appointing agents to passing instructions to vessels and agents, as well as communication with the various parties involved and follow-up of claims; they are responsible for vessel’s daily 24/7 follow-up and performance, directly with the Master/Owners or via brokers. They organize the freight and claims payments and coordinate with traders, chartering department and trading operations.

Shipping – Chartering

The Chartering department is arranging the appropriate shipment of the goods purchased and sold by the trading team. The team ensures that the vessels chartered by the Group meet the rigorous standards set by the Company.

Strategists

With a strong engineering background (math, physics, computer science), strategists specialize in the application of quantitative technics in trading, structuring and risk management. Strategists work closely with the business to identify opportunities, price complex structures and model their associated risks. As part of this process, they are involved in the development of internal quantitative models and collaborate with IT to deploy best trading and risk solutions to users. Strong analytical and problem solving skills, ability to grasp deep technical concepts, coding ability and keen willingness to learn are the keys to succeed in this position.

Structured Trade Finance

Structured Trade Finance is responsible for the financing of transactions that cannot be financed by the companies’ bilateral facilities which contemplate more homogeneous and repetitive transaction flows. Where transactions do not fit within the current bilateral facilities, Structured Trade Finance is responsible for the distribution of credit risk and facilitation of financing when Mercuria does not wish to assume these risks on a proprietary basis. The team works closely with transaction originators to ensure that the customer transaction is structured in a manner that will enable the risks to be covered in line with the Group’s risk appetite. Furthermore the team is responsible for the establishment of the Group’s various Borrowing Base facilities as well as the negotiation of the various bi-lateral facilities that are used by the Trade finance team.

Trading – Front office

Trading makes up of the core of Mercuria’s business model. Our teams are highly specialized and operate in all key commodity markets. Mercuria’s trading is global and asset-backed while relying on local skill sets and international best practices to achieve success.

Trade finance

The Trade Finance teams manage the financing for Mercuria’s trade flows across all commodities and partner with the Treasury team to optimize our financing costs. The TF team manage the utilisation of all bilateral facilities, repos, borrowing bases and RCF facilities that have been established by the Structured Trade Finance & Treasury teams. They are also integral to the strong relationship management activity across Mercuria that works with our 100 plus financing banks.

Travel

The travel team manages all business travel arrangements. Our dedicated travel coordinators are the point of contact between the travel suppliers and the travelers. The travel specialists are looking after flights, hotels, car rental, visas and train booking requests.

Treasury

Mercuria Treasury operates out of three regional hubs, Geneva, Singapore and Houston. The team is responsible for short term funding and liquidity management, foreign exchange risk management and the sourcing of committed un-secured funding from banks and “real money” investors such as pension and insurance funds.