NCO is part of the private elite Club that facilitates global trade with exclusive relationships with top-tier global commodity traders. The commodities market is a high-stakes calculated risk, full of complex hedging procedures, capital intensive, opportunity oriented, and speculative place to invest. The company is one of the trading arms of OPTICS GROUP (originate Purchase & trade international commodities) in Zug, Switzerland. The group's descriptive mandate is sustainability, environmental and social awareness, and high ethical standards to protect consumers from commodity market volatility.
We are a boutique commodity unit with unique traders’ desks.
NCO trades across the commodity industry markets in oil, oil derivatives, gas, chemicals, metals, and agriculture. Our people understand the cyclicality of our business and the market trends. Our in-house models are designed with a forward vision and differentiate from the traditional producer's model of low-cost earth extraction of raw materials and term-based contracts. We trade our market knowledge, read through the world events, understand the supply and demand drivers, risk management, and risk management as a fundamental component to create wealth and profit. We have invested and gained substantial knowledge of the world's commodity trading patterns. We understand the market dynamics, the supply and demand drivers, the risk management associated with all our trades, the hedging mechanisms, and, more importantly, global relationships. We are a multicultural group, and we have a spectrum of various trading models, ranging from simple trading to speculative paper trading with the company's products, whereby our traders bet on the market movements and create a portfolio, often exploiting arbitrage opportunities. Although our Holdings are in Switzerland and most Suisse trading houses believe in asset-light investments, we invest in floating assets, storage facilities, etc., to support our physical commodities trading. Our fixed assets are essential tools to hedge our open positions and facilitate trades on increased exposures and market downtrends.
Our straightforward business model. NCO has a clear and defined business model in place. We compete globally but in notable transactions. We have the infrastructure, financial assets, and geographical areas to execute our trades. Our trading desks have the sourcing, marketing, and selling ability. Our business model provides that the risk management and the hedging mechanism support the trading desks to achieve their targets. The well-rounded business logic identifies our transparent trading model.
A global organization. We bridge the cultural gaps between a trading desk and commodity sourcing. It is a difficult task, and it takes talented and experienced people to do it and integrate the trade. Our commodity desk is a global-focused unit, consisting of a desk manager that oversees one type of commodity and structures the P&L. The desk includes expertise in risk management, sales, execution, credit, legal to facilitate selling terms. The structure results in the ultimate profitability of the trade and generous compensation to avoid attrition to competitors. Our traders make up about 40% of our staff, supported by operations, shipping, risk, finance, and back-office functions.
Our group is a performance-based organization. We value our people, and we continue training them. We set targets, and we pay them very well. We have bonus rewards and compensations we have business development budgets. We value intelligent people working together and utilizing the company's resources correctly. Our talented people adhere to our cultural, ethical, corporate governance, risk management, and hedging mechanisms. We are a challenging organization with discriminating people and work as a solid unit from the top to the bottom, vertical and horizontal.
We have in place a commodity trading risk management (CTRM) system. Our team uses commodity hedges, forex hedges, and various derivatives when the underlying assets we trade are physical commodities. Overall, hedging is a mandatory procedure at NCO as each trade generates a different type of risk. Our desk is required to use futures, swaps, or other derivative mechanisms to defuse or alleviate the risk exposures. Our traders also observe the regulatory requirements and are cost cautious of the various hedging instruments available. Risk analysis is always available at a chance to identify the type of risk either market counterparty forex legal logistics transportation and based on that to cover the trading exposure.
A global organization. We bridge the cultural gaps between a trading desk and commodity sourcing. It is a difficult task, and it takes talented and experienced people to do it and integrate the trade. Our commodity desk, a genuinely global unit, consists of a desk manager that oversees one type of commodity with oversight of the P&L. The commodity desk entails risk management with salespeople for the execution. Credit and the legal aspects of the selling terms and the ultimate profitability of the trade, along with the generous compensation to avoid attrition to competitors. Our traders are about 40%of our people, supported by operations, shipping, risk, finance, and back-office functions
Our corporate finance department oversees the entire trading operations. Capital adequacy is always in place to anticipate margin calls counterparty exposure available working capital bonding and legal capital availability and sets up the limits to avoid risk exposure. Our trading desks work with trading SPVs, isolated from the overall organization. The leading company allocates specific capital for each trading desk ring-fenced SPV. Support functions cover all insurance, auditing functions, and treasury activities.
Our trading desks have vital functionalities, including order inputs, ship tracking, risk reports, and communication with financial and reconciliation systems. Our system is customized and developed with a major auditing firm consultation over the years. We started our journey with Allegro and slowly customized and our functionalities. We use various sophisticated data feeds Integrated into our ERP system to keep the traders logged in the market and open the log on each trade. Our traders have access to arbitrage opportunities to increase returns and instant access to all commercial market ancillary services, future market price data, and transportation and storage costs. Algorithms and quants teams are engaged to support and upgrade the system to adapt it to ever-changing trading patterns. Our investment in the ERP system is significant, and it takes continuous maintenance and upgrades and the efficacy of a long-term commitment. The knock-on effects are visible, and while we are moving assertively in the commodities space, we see the benefits and reflection on the training on our new talent systems.
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2011
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2012
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2013/14
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2015
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2016/17
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2018
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2019/21
The company was incorporated in 2011 by a wealthy woman initially as a complementary unit of her shipping activities to enhance the trading. The post 2008 events resulted in negative impacts on the oil markets, difficulties and with limited credit availability etc. The company was set up with the principals’ financial resources, and with the view to take a position on small fossil by- products. In the summer of 2011 NCO w was up and running. The company operated in the regional Med markets and west coast of Africa.
In 2012.The company traded gasoline in to west Africa and gasoil. The oil supplies were very high and NCO took advance of the North Africa crisis to trade small parcels of oil products.
2013 the company started to set up the infrastructure when the first signs of commodity prices drop appeared and alarms went on followed by the 2014 calamitous drop of the commodities market across all classes of different commodities.
2015 it was the same with the commodity prices down by almost 40% signaling the end of the super cycle that started in 2000 and the 2014/2015 ended with China slowing down on the purchase of raw materials. NCO traded carefully back-to back transaction only mitigating the down side risks and at the same time building more infrastructure for the next day.
2016 /2017 the various macroeconomic effects and the wake of the commodity collapse left most of the commodity counterparties leaking their woods and reshuffling their trading models. NCOs trading model was enhanced and the company traded crude oil in 2million bbl. parcels.
In 2018 the company reached $ 1 Billion and since then is going strong.
2019 to 2021 the commodities market recovered remarkably and the new super cycle started. The group is looking forward to their global name recognition and its continued growth across the commodity space.
Leadership and Management coincide and they are part of those robust dynamics of our organization. Our leaders are constantly engaged and promote the company’s mission the company’s corporate standards environment and community. Our leadership it is not pretentious but a compassioned and sensitive promoting integrity and care about the community while treasuring its personnel. NCOs leadership avoids micromanagement giving its key people the ability to make their own calculated decisions and accomplish their goals. Our leadership has the agility to delegate and give clear market directions with responsibility and transparency. Our leadership is the beacon of our success and sustainability and will be shinning for the years to come. The forth- sight and the future global developments will always be on tour leaderships agenda to adopt then and provide to the organization that unparallel edge for the long term.
NCO has deep sense and understanding of the code of conduct and the ethical standards associated with it,as an international organization. Our ethical standards are very high and reflect the company’s profile and earns our counter party respect. We constantly enhance our ethical code of conduct with case studies lessons learned and always try to fathom in to deep understanding of our people that ethics are paramount. Being a multicultural organization, we try to integrate our people to understand our ethics code and policy and we reward values and correct behavior. We are a fair organization but we have zero tolerance on ethical standards. Integrity and respect of the people we are dealing with is our top priority. We always Address Challenges and up-date our Ethics Programs.
Our company has corporate governance in place as priority. The set of rules are clear and reflect to the group’s practices and due process. Our Corporate governance addresses the checks and balances of interest of the company’s stake holders, such as shareholders, senior management executives, customers, suppliers, financiers, the government, and the community. We have internal controls in place and we are able to track performance and disclosure. We understand the corporate governance it is important since it refers specifically to the set of rules, controls, policies, and resolutions put in place to dictate our corporate behavior. The board of directors is pivotal in governance, and it can have major ramifications for equity valuation. Proxy advisors, shareholders and other stakeholders may have also some indirect input and we adopt their positions in many occasions. Corporate governance is the structure of rules, practices, and processes used to direct and manage our company. Our corporate governance is constantly improving and influenced by our board of directors is the primary force any shortage of rules corporate governance can cast doubt on a company's operations and its ultimate profitability. NCOs Corporate governance covers the areas of environmental awareness, ethical behavior, corporate strategy, compensation, and risk management, plus our basic principles of corporate governance such as accountability, transparency, fairness, and responsibility. Corporate governance is important to investors since it shows a company's direction and business integrity. Good corporate governance helps to build trust with investors and the community. As a result, corporate governance helps promote financial viability by creating a long-term investment opportunity for us as a market participant.
In many occasions the board is making important decisions, such as corporate officer appointments, executive compensation, and dividend policy. In some instances, board obligations stretch beyond financial optimization, as when shareholder resolutions call for certain social or environmental concerns to be prioritized, such as:
- Discipline. Corporate discipline is a commitment by a company’s senior management to adhere to behavior that is universally recognized and accepted to be correct and proper...
- Transparency....
- Independence....
- Accountability....
- Responsibility....
- Fairness....
- Social responsibility.
A principle of good governance is that stakeholders should be informed about the company’s activities, what it plans to do in the future and any risks involved in its business strategies. Transparency means openness, a willingness by the company to provide clear information to shareholders and other stakeholders. For example, transparency refers to the openness and willingness to disclose financial performance figures which are truthful and accurate. Disclosure of material matters concerning the organization’s performance and activities should be timely and accurate to ensure that all investors have access to clear, factual information which accurately reflects the financial, social and environmental position of the organization. Organizations such our clarify and make publicly known the roles and responsibilities of the board and management to provide shareholders with a level of accountability. Transparency ensures that stakeholders can have confidence in the decision-making and management processes of a company.