SINGAPORE, Jan 23 (Reuters) – A former trading executive with Chinese refining giant Sinopec has joined Singapore-based commodities firm Sino Crown International to build and lead its crude oil trading, two industry sources with knowledge of the hire said.
Simon Chen, or Chen Bo, who was president of Sinopec’s trading vehicle Unipec until late 2018, joined the Singapore firm in November, said the two people.
Chen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sino Crown is a unit of Zheshang Development Group, an east China-based commodities firm controlled by state-run Zhejiang Communications Investment Group.
It trades metals and fuel oil, and is expanding into crude oil trading, said one of the sources who has direct knowledge of the company’s operations.
Chen, a career crude oil trader in his early 60s, joined Unipec in the early 1990s and became its president in 2014.
He was suspended in late 2018 after Unipec incurred record derivatives trading losses which Sinopec blamed on “inappropriate trading strategies”, Reuters reported at the time.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Jan Harvey)
