BoA’s Mooney joins Trafigura

David Mooney has left Bank of America in New York and joined Trafigura, a privately owned Swiss-based commodity trading company with offices in 30 countries. Mooney, former head of commodity derivatives at BoA, joined Trafigura’s London office as head of power and natural gas trading last week.

Trafigura was established in 1993 as a private group of companies owned by its founding shareholders. The main areas of activity are trading in crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, metals, minerals, electricity and other commodities. Trafigura also invests in projects related to these core trading activities, and has significant emerging market interests.

Mooney told RiskNews Trafigura employs around 600 energy market professionals worldwide and the company is much like a smaller version of Swiss-based diversified natural resources group Glencore. Trafigura does not trade derivatives speculatively, Mooney added.

BoA said it would not be hiring a direct replacement for Mooney. Instead Rick Grove and Julian Barrowcliffe step up to become co-heads of BoA's commodities business, both based in New York.

Under Mooney’s stewardship, BoA expanded its commodities derivatives business from small beginnings to challenge more established players in the crude oil market in particular. Last month BoA picked up Energy & Power Risk Management's house of the year award for crude oil and swept the board in EPRM and Risk's 2003 commodity derivatives rankings, taking first place in all six crude oil categories.

In August 2002 BoA gained regulatory approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to trade electricity derivatives from its New York office.