BNP Paribas adds six to commodity business

William Hartz has joined as a director and senior trader in New York - he was formerly in charge of managing petroleum trading books at Bank of America.

William Buchanan has come to the London office as a senior oil trader from Standard Bank. He will be joined by Alexandre Benech and Raphael Juston, both transferring from the equity and derivatives division to the commodity derivatives team. Benech will become trading co-ordinator and Juston will focus on commodity structured products and investments.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, Christophe Gros, formerly head of Total Trading's Singapore office, has joined as a manager on the energy trading desk, and John McArthur has moved from Deutsche Bank Singapore as a senior trader.

The bank's global head of commodity derivatives, Jean-Marc Bonnefous, said: "As significant opportunities appear in this space for corporate risk management as well as investors' applications, we will continue to make more strategic hires in commodity derivatives and look at adding new products."