Macquarie Group expands global physical oil business with addition of Latin America origination team

Macquarie Group (Macquarie) (ASX: MQG), today announced the expansion of its global physical oil business with the addition of a Latin American oil liquids origination and marketing team. The appointments continue Macquarie’s global expansion of its physical energy and trading platform. The team joins Macquarie’s existing client-focused energy trading business, headquartered in Houston.

The new team, led by Gustavo Giron, Managing Director and Head of Latin America Oil Origination, adds regional expertise to Macquarie’s existing focus on US domestic fuel oil and crude oil and other global oil products. Mr. Giron has over 15 years of energy experience and most recently served as the Regional Manager for Brazil at BP’s Global Oil Trading Division where he was responsible for the firm’s oil marketing and & origination activities. He joined BP in 2004 and held a number of roles including Business Development Director for North America Gas & Power Trading, and Senior Analyst for Infrastructure Strategy and Development. Prior to that, he held a number of roles including Cash Trader for Crude Oil at UBS Warburg. He will report to Nicholas O’Kane, Global Head of Macquarie Group’s Energy Markets Division.

The team also includes:

• Hilarion Lopez joins as a Senior Vice President. Mr. Lopez has 13 years of experience in origination and trading expertise with crude oil, petcoke and sulfur. He joined most recently from BP where he was part of their Latin American marketing and origination upstream trading team. Prior to that, he was a synthetic crude oil trader for Sincor, a joint venture between Total, PDVSA and Statoil in Caracas, Venezuela.
• Mauricio Ruiz joins as a Senior Vice President. He has 14 years of commercial experience in the petroleum industry. Mr. Ruiz joins from BP where he spent the prior ten years in oil business development, marketing and origination roles most recently serving as a Commercial Development Director in their Marketing & Origination group. His other roles included Venezuela Country Manager and Business Development Manager for Central American and the Caribbean for Air BP.

"Since 2003, Macquarie has successfully built out a global physical trading platform across key commodities including natural gas, power, LNG, coal, NGLs and oil, and today is a major participant in the physical energy," said Nicholas O’Kane, Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Macquarie Group’s Energy Markets Division.

"The addition of this capable and talented team allows us to further extend our presence and expertise into Latin America and is an important next step in the evolution of our business platform. Macquarie has long been active in Latin America through a number of business activities and we are pleased to add physical oil to that suite of client offerings," added Mr. O’Kane.