SMART GLOBAL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
Andy Mitchell graduated in 1996 with a PhD in Chemical and Process Engineering. He spent 20 years at BP, having joined in 1996 when he worked briefly as a Refinery Engineer prior to moving to BP's London trading floor as a Trading Analyst, he then spent 15 years trading.
Andy's trading career began trading Refinery Margins and inter-product spreads before moving onto a Quant / Systematic trading book (akin to a managed futures hedge fund) trading over 50 asset classes spanning oil and gas through softs, metals, bonds and currencies to stock indices. Andy spent his final 3 years at BP working within the Treasury Trading team, trading Spot FX and managing the BP Group foreign exchange risk.
Andy is an accomplished and outcome focused Senior Trader with broad ranging skills across corporate flow optimisation, trading entrepreneurially around corporate flow and trading purely entrepreneurially. He has expertise in designing, implementing and executing quantitative and systematic trading algorithms, managing risk and money management of multiple asset classes including oil, gas, softs, metals, indices, foreign exchange and bonds, technical analysis and numerical analysis. Andy also has extensive experience teaching technical analysis and trading disciplines to management, trading graduates and third parties. He was a regular contributor to BP's internal trader training programmes and external third party courses specialising in paper trading and technical analysis.
Andy joined Smart Global in March 2017 as Director of Supply and Trading.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Member of the Management Team
Anne graduated from Dublin City University, with a Bachelor of Business studies degree before enjoying a progressive 12 year career at BP. During this time Anne qualified as a Management Accountant whilst gaining extensive experience in Risk Management & Control and Performance Reporting, primarily within the commodity trading organisation.
Since leaving BP in 2008, Anne has been engaged on several contracts through Smart Global in senior Finance & Risk roles. This included a role with a key client where she was integral in implementing a reporting structure and advising traders on trading decisions as part of an innovative optimisation project. More recently she has focused on internal control and compliance activities, working within a large Gas & Power trading organisation.
Anne has a wealth of knowledge and experience including presenting complex trading information to senior management plus working directly with trading teams.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Business Development
Brian spent 37 years with BP, 23 of which was spent in Trading. His Trading career spanned crude and product trading as well as business development. He traded clean products in the USA for 5 years before returning to London as Book Leader of Naphtha and subsequently became Manager of Business Development and later Crude Trading Manager. Brian's international experience is vast having travelled extensively, specialising in the FSU and Middle East.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Crude
Chris began his career trading soft commodities on the London Futures Exchange. This became the platform for a highly successful career in the energy sector spanning some thirty four years.
Chris joined Norwegian state oil company Statoil in 1985. His broad exposure to International markets during nineteen years' tenure gave him an in-depth knowledge of the petroleum industries supply & demand economics which, combined with his recognised trading skills, enabled him to take on many high profile management positions within Statoil's marketing and trading organisation. The challenges presented were inherent with working for one of the world's largest crude oil exporters. His extensive working knowledge of the BFOE, Dated Brent, CFD & futures contracts combined with the ability to maximise crude quality differentials, through arbitrage and storage trades, helped the teams he worked with achieve their financial targets year on year.
Looking for a new challenge Chris moved to Morgan Stanley to work on physical crude acquisitions while also trading Dated Brent derivatives. This was followed by a move to Nexen Energy Marketing and Trading Ltd, joining a team whose given mandate was to create added value to the company's equity portfolio. Over a nine year period Chris and his colleagues developed innovative and profitable trading strategies for crude oil assets produced within Europe, West & North Africa, Canada and the USA.
Wanting to impart his knowledge to other areas of the industry Chris joined Smart Global in December 2015 as Director of Marketing & Trading.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
David worked at BP for 19 years. During his period, he was book leader for the European gasoline trading group, the North Sea Crude equity team and the UK and European Natgas trading books. After BP, David moved to Klesch and Co, a private equity firm which specializes in distressed asset acquisition, and was instrumental in establishing a metals and energy trading platform which allowed Klesch to expand it's portfolio of energy-intensive businesses.
Most recently, David worked at RWE as Head of Physical Oil Trading, moving RWE's capability in this area from that of a paper-only player to a company able to compete in global physical markets.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Demurrage
Graeme Fairhurst moved to London in 2005 having previously held several Research Grant Administrator roles at Cambridge University (Working for Depts of Computer Science, Physics and Engineering).
As a demurrage negotiator at BP, he worked on crude desk with particular attention on cargoes supplied into Trieste, Fos and Northern Germany for Deutsche BP and Lingen Refinery. Graeme spent time in Germany working with employees locally, to maximise and develop our demurrage handling capacity. Also dealt with WAF cargos and North Sea and built up really good relationships within BP and the wider demurrage industry - he was responsible for over 6 Million USD savings in first year working with the team.
Graeme then moved to Morgan Stanley in 2008 and within 9 months was asked to lead the demurrage team. Again, a wide portfolio of clients, including working with Ineos refineries in Grangemouth and Lavera as part of MS/Ineos J.V. Skills developed at this time included negotiations with NOCs and dealing with global view of client's ‘outstandings', as well as developing the necessary reporting and analytical functions necessary to accurately track and develop claim management.
In 2009 he opportunity to move to Geneva to work for Eiger Shipping (shipping arm of LITASCO ) and decided to make the move as had always wanted to have the experience of working abroad. Worked in Geneva for around 4 years, again covering crude and products deliveries, charter party and contractual demurrage across a global portfolio, including Russian up-stream supply, refineries in Med, NWE and Russia as well as trading opportunities globally (US, China, Europe, WAF).
In 2013, following the birth of his son, he decided to move back to the UK where he was appointed Claims manager at PetroIneos Trading Limited, again dealing with a broad portfolio of clients and claims. He instigated new procedures and developed the necessary systems to enable claim tracking and efficient issuance and recovery of claims. Major clients dealt with included Sonatrach, EGPC, PetroChina, plus majors and trading houses.
In 2015 Graeme joined BTG (now ECTP), with a brief to handle all demurrage and shipping claims as well as learning and developing Oil operations skills. He successfully learned and adapted to the different role, and for the last 12 months of working there he was head of the operations team and developed a wide range of skills including, trade finance, hedging, trade optimisation and decision making, chartering, blending and spec analysis as well as oil and ship operations at a high level. Graeme also spent a lot of time working on storage positions and analysis (handling close to 1 Million cbms of rented storage worldwide) as well as managing a product import business into Guatemala. and dealing with all demurrage and shipping claims.
Graeme currently works on claim collection and management projects for some of Smart Global's key clients, while also assisting with our learning and development services.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
James's career spanned over 40 years in the Oil business for Shell, BP and Coastal States. He spent 16 years in Trading, including Team Leader of Middle distillates and Brent crude Trader on the North Sea bench for BP. He also headed a team seeking and selecting new trading talent.
After leaving BP he was engaged by Smart Global as a Technical Consultant running some of their Trader Training Courses.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
John specialises in Energy Marketing for Smart Global and is co-founder. He joined BNOC in 1981. After privatisation, he started a career in Supply and Trading, spending 6 years in Crude Oil Operations for Britoil then BP. Between 1990 and 2008, John was responsible for the long term acquisition and sale of North Sea Crude Oil, primarily for the Upstream, Refining and Trading arms of BP. John has an extensive industry network which places Smart Global at the centre of the market.
In his marketing role with Smart Global, John uses his market network to assist and advise various clients on efficient disposal and purchase of oil. John is also involved with the recruitment stream of Smart Global, assisting clients to fill new and temporary trading and trading support roles.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
Les's career has spanned 44 years in the Oil Industry, most of that time with Chevron and Statoil as well as other trading companies and ship brokers.
His time has all been spent in downstream and this has covered crude and product trading, crude and product operations, refinery optimization, shipping, and business development in the FSU, Caspian, North and West Africa and South America.
Job Titles:
- Chief Technical Officer
- Member of the Management Team
Luke has been designing and building software systems for the Oil and Gas and Financial Services sectors for over 20 years. With a background in physical energy trading then the derivative markets he has gained extensive knowledge building software for these industries. This domain knowledge enables him to deliver systems that meet the exact needs of the client.
He specialises in front end development, risk systems, artificially intelligent algorithms and creating simulated environments for analysis and forecasting. In the past years he has delivered a range of projects for the Oil and Gas industries such as "black box" trading systems, demand & price forecasting systems, order / execution systems, exposure and support systems, optionality models, and a simulated environments for training.
He joined Smart Global in 2011 to head up their software services team.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Management Team
The Managing Director of Smart Global and co-founder. A qualified accountant, Martin worked at BP for 18 years in both Control and Trading roles. He was book leader for North Sea Crude Equity trading for 7 years. During this time Martin managed the BP oil and gas disposals for North Sea production and latterly Azerbaijan.
Martin held a number of control roles in BP both inside and outside the oil trading division. In 1998, Martin moved across from the back to front office to become a junior crude trader. Later, he went on to become the senior trader on the North Sea equity disposals crude trading desk with an annual profitability of around $100 million. Martin spent 3 years as Director and senior trader in a new venture setup by BP in Hamburg, Germany.
Since the formation of Smart Global, Martin has spent much time assisting clients with exposure and daily reporting issues and systems. This has given him additional knowledge about the current regulatory climate in terms of company reporting of positions in the market and mark to market data. He has expertise on trading options and their valuation in addition to the formulation of trading strategies.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
Mike graduated from Durham University in 1987 with a BSc Natural Sciences and gained a Sloan Masters in Management from London Business School in 2004. Mike spent 15 years at BP working in London and the Middle East. His major roles were in business origination, trading and as a leader of the western hemisphere crude oil trading and optimisation team.
Mike moved to BG Group in 2007 and spent 18 months as Aide to the Chief Executive, Sir Frank Chapman, followed by a variety of roles in Reading and Aberdeen in Commercial, Change and Asset Management.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading
Richard graduated from the University of Aston in 1990 and joined the BP graduate commercial development program. Following a two year multi-discipline training program Richard specialised in crude and then fuel oil trading rising quickly to senior trader and book leader.
Richard's trading career spanned 25 years and involved exposure to Far Eastern, European and US crude, LPG and fuel oil markets trading from locations in London, Belgium and more recently ten years in the United States. On his return to the UK in 2014 Richard continued to work for the oil major BP on the business development of a variety of high level trading and supply related projects, including a major cost restructuring of a global products trading business and investigative pre-merger negotiations.
Throughout his career Richard has had broad experience in the learning and development side of the energy trading business, firstly attending a variety of in house training programs and latterly assisting in the teaching and individual assessment of up and coming commercial talent.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Risk
Robert graduated from Oxford University in 1976 in Engineering Science and gained an MBA from Kingston University in 1985.
He worked for BP for 35 years mainly in finance and trading, the last 5 years as a consultant. He provided Global Trade Control for Crude, Products and Gas and specialised in providing traders with business solutions to analyse risk, exposure and profit, including option modelling. He is also an expert on ETRM systems and has provided expert witness advice in numerous cases.
Since 2008 he has worked with Smart Global Trading, providing risk and option models for various clients including Nexen Marketing in London and Calgary, Enquest, Trafigura, Maersk, Glencore, and Alpine.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Trading Psychology
Simon joined BP in 1991 with a degree in Economics and Accounting from Bristol University. He completed his graduate training in Hamburg and then returned to London to take a risk management role in BP's crude oil trading team. He was given his first position as a trader in 1995 and spent the next 4 years developing his crude trading skills in the West African, Mediterranean and Sour markets.
In 1999, he moved across to the North Sea bench to run the physical and paper books and spent a brief spell in tax optimization. In 2004, Simon switched to run the new BP trading venture in the Caspian and head up a physical book in the same region. In 2007, Simon was asked to head up crude oil origination in London, which was responsible for generating new strands of business for the trading books. At the end of 2008, Simon took a sabbatical to fulfill some of his ambitions outside of BP.
Following a year playing on the amateur circuit in South Africa, Simon founded a performance academy for aspiring elite golfers there and took some qualifications in NLP & sports psychology, a subject he teaches at his academy. He is passionate about coaching and developing young entrepreneurs and has interests in many business sectors.
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate
- Senior Associate - Operations
Tony began his career in the Merchant Navy working through the ranks to the position of Captain and holds a Bachelors Degree in Nautical Science. He moved to the USA to take a role with Caleb Brett (now Intertek), as a Marine Technical Supervisor and was subsequently promoted to the position of North East Regional Manager responsible for 9 offices.
Tony moved back to the UK in 1989 and joined BP moving through various roles in cargo assurance and trading operations including a number of management positions. In 2004 Tony was appointed Head of Operations for Integrated Supply and Trading. In this capacity he set the strategy and vision for the future whilst managing a large team in excess of 100 people, covering the operations functions of trading (crude and products), demurrage, inventory, cargo assurance, and shipping coordination.
As part of his wider responsibilities Tony was the Business Sponsor for the commercial graduate scheme, managing the demand, recruitment and development of quality talent. He is accredited in leadership development techniques and has developed and presented courses on a variety of subjects. He brings both strong technical and operational experience to the Smart Global team along with his strengths in leadership development, engaging the workforce and motivating and developing staff. Tony will lead the Smart Global Operations Business for the Training and Consulting streams.