VTB Capital ups oil trading operations in H1
MOSCOW. Dec 13 (Interfax) - VTB Capital carried out trade transactions with 60.5 million barrels of oil, 2.5 million tonnes of petroleum products and 850,000 tonnes of coal in the first half of 2012, VTB Group materials show.
The group acquired around 21.2 tonnes of gold and 108.1 tonnes of silver directly from producers.
"These indicators reflect the serious scale of the business. The VTB Group has over the past few years adopte a leading position on the market for transactions with commodities," Gazprombank First Vice President Andrei Zokin told Interfax.
"In all likelihood, transactions with oil, petroleum products and coal are not bank investments, but are carried out in client interests and, correspondingly, bring the bank commission revenue. As to precious metals, that could be the bank's own investment as well as financing gold producers. The bank could be the end or an interim lender to companies producing gold in Russia. When it is making its own investment in precious metals there is a risk of the exchange rate cost of precious metals changing, however such risks are usually hedged by banks and it is difficult to estimate their size in the overall mass of transactiosn with commodities," Olga Belenkaya, the deputy head of Sovlink's analytical department, told Interfax.
The first half results correspond to trading operations of around 15 million tonnes of oil per year. In contrast, this indicator for Gunvor was 116 million tonnes in 2011.
VTB Capital traded more oil in the first half of 2012 than in January-September 2011 (43 million barrels and 4.6 million tonnes of petroleum products). The share of coal in trading, however, slumped (25 million tonnes in January-September 2011). VTB alos bought less gold from producers - it bought 283 tonnes in January-September 2011.
Among its trading operations in the nine months of 2011, VTB Capital listed charter contracts amounting to 3,750 days. This type of operation is not mentioned in the materials for the first half of 2012.
French bank Natixis wanted to sell part of its commodity brokerage business to VTB Capital this year, but the investment company was not interested in this deal.