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Chief financial officer Christophe Salmon and executive director Jose Maria Larocca are due to leave Trafigura in the second shake-up of the commodity trader’s leadership in seven months.
The departures follow a period of record performance for the privately held trading house, which made profits of $7.4bn in 2023 and agreed a record dividend of $5.9bn for its 1,200 employees who own the business.
Salmon, who joined Trafigura in 2012 and served as finance chief for almost 10 years, will step down in June and be replaced by the company’s CFO for Asia, Stephan Jansma, the company said on Friday.
Larocca joined Trafigura in 1994, a year after it was founded, and is the longest-serving employee among the current management. He was appointed to the leadership team as head of oil and petroleum products in 2007.
Trafigura last week pleaded guilty to US Department of Justice corruption charges related to the payment of bribes in Brazil to secure “secure improper advantages” on oil contracts between 2003 and 2014.
Trafigura said there was “no connection between the decision to retire by either senior executive and any legal issue, including the former parent company’s recent resolution with the DoJ”.
Larocca, who while at Trafigura also represented Argentina in showjumping at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, will leave the company at the end of September.
The changes continue an overhaul of the group’s leadership, which began in September 2023 when Trafigura restructured its management ahead of the exit of longtime chief operating officer Mike Wainwright, who retired last month.
Following the death in 2015 of Trafigura’s founder, Claude Dauphin, chief executive Jeremy Weir, Wainwright and Larocca had run the company as part of an 11-person management team, which was trimmed to eight people in September.
Wainwright and Trafigura have since been indicted by Switzerland’s federal prosecutor on charges of bribing foreign officials in Angola between 2009 and 2011. Trafigura in December said Wainwright “rejects the charges against” him, and that the company would “defend itself” in court.
Incoming CFO Jansma joined Trafigura in 2013 as head of structure and trade finance, and previously held positions at Rabobank and Fortis Bank. He is at present based in Singapore.
