Ex-Lukoil traders jump to US-based Hartree’s fuel oil desk

Hartree Partners LP, the commodities trading firm founded by a pair of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. veterans, hired three ex-Lukoil PJSC traders to build out its fuel oil desk. 

Harry Thwaites, the former global head of fuel oil trading at Lukoil’s trading arm Litasco SA, is now Hartree’s senior fuel oil trader in London, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Marc Holm, also previously with Lukoil, started this summer as a senior fuel oil trader based in Houston. A third Litasco alum, Kevin Brown, was hired for a US desk, while Roberto Levier, formerly of Monjasa, joined as a marine fuel trader in London. 

Thwaites, Holm, Brown and Levier did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The expansion comes as Litasco, a global giant in fuel oil trading, loses employees in droves following widespread economic sanctions against Russia. That’s creating opportunities for other commodity traders to snap up its talent. 

For Hartree, the hires mark its re-entry into a market it had abandoned nearly eight years ago. The New York-based firm recently started to offer bunkering services at the Port of New York and New Jersey this year. 

Hartree was founded by Stephen Hendel and Stephen Semlitz, who helped build Goldman Sachs’s commodities business into one of the largest in Wall Street in the 1990s. They left the bank and, together with Guy Merison, founded Hess Energy Trading Co in 1997. In 2015 Hess Corp sold its stake to investment firm Oaktree Capital Management and the firm was renamed as Hartree.