(Reuters) – Swiss merchant Mercuria, which agreed last month to buy JPMorgan Chase & Co’s physical commodities business, posted a 14 percent rise in revenue and a 7 percent increase in trading volume in 2013.
The firm, which in just a decade has risen to challenge more established rivals such as Vitol and Glencore, said on its website that its turnover rose to $112 billion last year on 195 million tonnes of traded raw materials. The previous year it reported turnover of $98 billion on 183 million tonnes of trade.
No further information was immediately available.
The $3.5 billion purchase of JPMorgan’s large trading business marks the culmination of a 10-year journey for Swiss traders Marco Dunand and Daniel Jaeggi, who founded Mercuria in 2004 when they took a stake in Poland-focused trade house J+S.
From its modest start focused on trading oil in Europe, Mercuria has had one of the steepest growth rates in the industry over the past decade, with its turnover more than doubling over the past three years. (Reporting by Jonathan Leff; Editing by Peter Galloway)
