around 30 percent of the company. After dropping out of school he began his career at 15 in a metals scrap yard in the UK. He spent time trading metal in Hong Kong before moving to New York and a stint at commodities trading giant Phibro. Back in Hong Kong, he traded commodities with China in the 1970s and was the first to sell China's Daqing crude oil to the United States.
Noble has grown by acquiring troubled competitors. In 2001, for instance, it bought storied Swiss company Andre & Cie, once one of the world's top five grains traders. Finding itself with a big client base, but short of the physical supplies it needed to meet demand, Noble built its own processing facilities. It's a model it has replicated across various commodities.
Noble is now seeking to spin off its agriculture business with a listing on the Singapore Exchange. The grains business accounts for a third of its earnings and could have a value of more than ${esc.dollar}5 billion. Wall Street heavyweight JP Morgan is advising Noble on the planned listing.
The company's early forays into trading gas and oil left it with a black eye. Noble quit its global liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) operations in 2010, a year it was censured in Nigeria for discrepancies in gasoline shipping lists. Nigeria's Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) said that in one transaction the amount of fuel submitted for subsidies did not match the actual quantity delivered. The company did not comment publicly on this incident.
And it sounded a rare retreat this week when sources close to the company said it had shut its European coal trading operations to focus on Asia and trading.
The China connection continues. In April Noble appointed Li Rongrong, former chairman of the state-owned assets supervision and administration commission of China, as a non-executive director.
PRIVATE FIRM, PUBLIC SPAT WHO: Louis Dreyfus, founded 1851 by Leopold Louis-Dreyfus WHERE: Paris WHAT: Cotton, rice, grains, orange juice TURNOVER: ${esc.dollar}46 billion (2010) CEO: Serge Schoen STAFF: 34,000
By Gus Trompiz
In the two years since Margarita Louis-Dreyfus inherited control of the world's top cotton and rice trader following the death of her husband Robert, the woman the French press call "the tsarina" has been at the centre of one of the most intriguing struggles in corporate Europe.
Analysts and commentators focused on differences between the forty-something, Russian-born Margarita Louis-Dreyfus and chief executive Jacques Veyrat over how to develop the 160-year-old family firm and whether to list its shares or seek a merger deal.
The winner? The tsarina, or MLD, as the press sometimes also calls her. In April, she and Veyrat told business daily Les Echos that the CEO would be stepping down to make way for Serge Schoen, head of Louis Dreyfus Commodities.
The very public power struggle was all the more remarkable because the company normally keeps everything, from its precise earnings to the exact age of its main shareholder and chairwoman, a secret.
Louis Dreyfus is a well-honed global operator, marketing agricultural commodities from wheat to orange juice. But most analysts think it needs fresh capital to grow, or to buy out minority family shareholders who will have the option to sell their stakes in 2012.
Unsuccessful talks have taken place with Singaporean commodities group Olam International Ltd, while bankers say they have been sounded out about a stock market listing.
Margarita Louis-Dreyfus told Les Echos that a listing, merger or the entry of a private investor were all options. But there's little room for maneuver: the majority stake she inherited is locked up in a trust her husband set up to last for 99 years.
"There is no ideal solution. What matters is that the group and its name survive," she said.
In the wake of Glencore's listing this year, there is interest in another big trading house going public; investors want exposure to long-term demand for commodities.
"I would love for them to be listed on the stock market," said Gertjan van der Geer, who manages an agriculture fund for Swiss bank Pictet. "Cargill and Louis Dreyfus are the large missing players in the commodity trading space."
It doesn't look likely anytime soon. "There is no rush, the company has been private for 150 years so there is no specific timing for changing the shareholding structure," one source close to the company said.
A management shake-up this year at France's most popular football club, Olympique Marseille, offers more proof of Margarita Louis-Dreyfus' determination to defend her husband's legacy and impose hard financial choices.
While pursuing Robert Louis-Dreyfus' passion for the club, which drained millions from his fortune, she has placed strict conditions on new investment.
"Olympique Marseille is at a crossroads," she told supporters in a statement to announce the changes at the club. It's a message that could apply just as well to the Louis Dreyfus group.
(Additional reporting by Jean-Francois Rosnoblet)
CASHING IN ON CHINESE PIGS WHO: Bunge, founded 1818 by Johann Peter Gottlieb Bunge in Amsterdam WHERE: White Plains, New York. TRADES: Grains, oilseeds, sugar TURNOVER: ${esc.dollar}46 billion (2010) CHAIRMAN and CEO: Alberto Weissner STAFF: 32,000
By Hugh Bronstein
Two decades ago, Chinese farmers fed their pigs just about anything they could lay their hands on. But since White Plains, New York-based Bunge set up in China in 1998, many have switched to soy pellets. Result: China's pigs are heavier than ever and Bunge has become a key supplier to one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
The company, which went public 10 years ago, realized early that rising incomes in Asia could be fed by Brazil and Argentina, two of the last remaining countries with new farmland left for crop cultivation.
It helps that the company's CEO Alberto Weisser is a Brazilian, and that Bunge has more than 100 years experience in South America.
"Asian demand for South American soybeans has exploded over the last five years and Bunge is arguably the best positioned company in the world as it relates to servicing and profiting from the Asian demand trend," said Jeff Farmer, an analyst who follows the company for Jefferies & Company in Boston.
Founded in 1818 in Amsterdam, the company is the world's No.1 oilseed processor. Along the way it has moved headquarters to Belgium, Argentina, Brazil and then the United States.
"They go where the business is," said an industry insider who asked not to be named. "No sentimental attachments to any country or location. What matters is results, and you can see that in the way they trade."
It doesn't always work. In May, Argentina kicked Bunge off the country's exporters' register after the government alleged it had evaded ${esc.dollar}300 million in taxes, an accusation the company denies. Argentina's tax office is investigating dozens of other agricultural exporters as well.
Despite not being on the registry, Bunge continues to export grains and agricultural products as usual, but it cannot cash in on certain tax benefits and it faces hurdles transporting goods within Argentina, which analysts say could hurt the company's bottom line.
ASIA'S NEW SUGAR KING WHO: Wilmar International, founded 1991 WHERE: Singapore WHAT: Palm oil, grains, sugar TURNOVER: ${esc.dollar}30.4 billion (2010) CHAIRMAN AND CEO: Kuok Khoon Hong STAFF: 88,000 plus
By Harry Suhartono and Naveen Thakral
Around two decades ago, Kuok Khoon Hong decided to leave the business empire of his billionaire uncle Robert Kuok to set up an edible oil business with a big bet: China.
He competed fiercely with Indonesia's Salim group, the business group commanded by his uncle, and won, to dominate the edible oil market in the world's most populous nation.
Wilmar is now the biggest soy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
