Mercuria Energy Group

Mercuria Energy Group Ltd is a privately held Swiss international commodity trading company active over a wide spectrum of global energy markets including crude oil and refined petroleum products, natural gas (including LNG), power, coal, biodiesel, carbon emissions, base metals and agricultural products. In 2014, the company bought the commodities trading arm of J.P. Morgan in a reported US$800 million deal.

It is one of the world's five largest independent energy traders and asset operators and is based in Geneva, Switzerland, with 28 additional offices worldwide.

Mercuria moves about 1.5m barrels of crude and oil products daily, and has upstream and downstream assets ranging from oil reserves in Argentina, Canada and the US, to oil and products terminals in Europe and China, as well as substantial investment in the coal mining industry and bio fuels plants in Germany and the Netherlands. Their primary competitors are Swiss commodity houses Glencore, Trafigura and Vitol, US based trader Cargill and Hong Kong/Singapore based Noble Group.

Mercuria was founded in 2004 by Marco Dunand and Daniel Jaeggi, then executives at Phibro—the commodities trader sold by Citigroup to Occidental Petroleum in 2009—and previously at Goldman Sachs. Until 2007, Mercuria was called the J&S Group and focused mostly on oil trading. As they have expanded, they have hired away traders and investment professionals from across Europe, particularly Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Louis Dreyfus Group and Electrabel in London. Mercuria's 2013 revenue was US$ 112 billion.

It has subsidiaries worldwide, including Navitas Energy in Canada and Vesta Terminal Services in Europe, which operates port logistics, storage and processing facilities in the Netherlands, Estonia, Belgium, and Germany. Mercuria, former owner of Vesta Terminal, entered into a joint venture with Sinopec by selling 50% of the terminals in 2013. In November 2010, Mercuria Energy bought MGM International Group from Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. and MGM International LLC. The Miami, Florida-based MGM International Group is developer of international projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and trades in global carbon markets.

The company recently arranged debt financing of 2.5 billion to fund expansion through asset purchases in Europe and North America. In 2010, Mr Dunand raised speculation that Mercuria may follow Glencore into the public markets by saying that they did not require additional capital immediately, but may go public within 2–3 years particularly if that allowed them to purchase assets that they could not otherwise afford.