Vitol Group doubled the amount its staff earned last year as it posted a record $15.1 billion profit thanks to wild swings in energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The trading house paid an average of just over $785,000 each in salary and bonuses to its 3,311 employees, compared with the previous year’s average of $394,000, according to the company’s audited annual accounts seen by Bloomberg News.
That’s before factoring in shareholder payouts to the roughly 450 top executives and traders who also own the company, receiving $2.5 billion in 2022 and another $2.5 billion in the first half of 2023, according to the accounts.
The figures highlight the huge windfall that commodities traders such as Vitol have enjoyed due to the volatility caused by the Ukraine invasion, and how, in an industry where many of the biggest players remain privately owned, the profits have accrued to a small number of individuals.
Together, major commodity traders Vitol, Cargill Inc., Glencore Plc and Trafigura Group made net profits of nearly $50 billion last year, five times the average of the previous decade. Among them, only Glencore is a public company.
Vitol’s net profit of $15.1 billion in 2022 was up 258 percent from a year earlier, a record, and more than the largest oil trader had made in the previous six years.
The average compensation of $785,000 per employee compares favorably with top Wall Street investment banks — more than double Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s level. and Morgan Stanley, whose average compensation per employee last year was about $312,000 and $280,000, respectively.
Vitol, known in the commodities trading industry for being relatively conservative in its financial management, mostly used its profits last year to shore up its balance sheet. It cut loans and borrowings by more than half, to $6 billion, and nearly doubled its shareholders’ equity to $25.8 billion.
A Vitol spokesman declined to comment.
