Trafigura’s Copper Uber-Bull Departs as Metals Drama Drags On

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(Bloomberg) — Kostas Bintas, the previous co-head of metals at commodity buying and selling big Trafigura Group, is leaving the corporate after being demoted in a September reshuffle that capped a turbulent yr for the division.

Bintas, who constructed Trafigura’s copper-trading e book into the world’s largest and is a longstanding and vocal bull on metals markets, is leaving the corporate by mutual consent, in response to an individual conversant in the matter. He might be on gardening go away with fast impact, the individual stated.

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His departure comes as Trafigura has been wrestling with the way forward for its metals unit, amid tensions throughout the high ranks over how a lot it ought to proceed to spend money on a enterprise that has underperformed up to now two years.

The metals unit has come beneath rising strain as income shrunk and the corporate was hit by an enormous alleged nickel fraud. Against this, the corporate’s power buying and selling divisions have been raking in report income, shifting the stability of energy between the highest executives who personal a lot of the firm.

The stress got here to a head in September, when the corporate introduced a shakeup of its senior management into a brand new, slimmed-down administration committee dominated by executives with an power buying and selling background.

Bintas was among the many handful of executives faraway from the corporate’s high administration workforce because of the modifications, after his former co-head Gonzalo De Olazaval was named the only real head of the metals enterprise, with Bintas retaining accountability for copper and aluminum however reporting to him.

Bintas, who declined to remark, joined Trafigura in 2009 and rose to develop into head of copper after which co-head of its metals division. Throughout that point, the corporate’s copper e book grew quickly to eclipse rival Glencore Plc and develop into the world’s largest dealer of the conducting steel.

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He’s identified out there for daring trades and bullish calls on copper, and have become certainly one of Trafigura’s most distinguished faces with common appearances at business conferences. In 2021, he forecast copper would rise to $15,000 a ton over the approaching decade — greater than 80% larger than at the moment’s costs.

The information of Bintas’s departure coincides with one of many largest annual occasions within the metals calendar, as merchants, miners and financiers descend on Shanghai for Asia Copper Week.

For Trafigura, the transfer provides to the drama on the firm’s metals division, because the commodity buying and selling big prepares to report its annual outcomes for the yr ended September within the coming weeks.

The alleged nickel fraud has price the corporate nearly $600 million, and its head of nickel and cobalt buying and selling left within the wake of its discovery. Trafigura has stated it doesn’t imagine any of its staff was complicit within the alleged fraud.

The group has additionally been compelled to assist search new funding for certainly one of its flagship investments — a copper-cobalt challenge within the Democratic Republic of Congo — after it ran right into a money crunch. The challenge has since been put up on the market by its proprietor, Bloomberg reported final month.

(Updates with further background all through.)

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