The Sugar Casino by Kingsman Jonathan

Author:Kingsman, Jonathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2015-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

T

raders and markets

7.1 Greg Page: the price of responsibility

Greg Page is Executive Chairman of Cargill Inc. The company has 152,000 employees in 67 countries and in fiscal year 2014 generated $134.9 billion in sales and earnings of $1.87 billion. I heard Greg speak at a Financial Times conference in Lausanne in 2013 and he kindly agreed to let me use a shortened version of that presentation in this book.

This is Greg’s presentation:

“Trading has long been a fundamental of life. To quote Libanius, from his “Orations III, written in the 4th Century:

“God did not bestow all products on all parts of the earth, but distributed his gifts over the different regions, to the end that men might cultivate a social relationship because one would have need of the help of another. And so he called commerce in to being, that all men might be able to have common enjoyment of the fruits of earth, no matter where produced”

I am not sure that markets are necessarily divine, but I am convinced Libanius was on the right path. Cargill has not been in business that long, but in 2015 we are celebrating 150 years of our company’s role in this ancient practice. Trading, or exchanging goods, has long underpinned human progress, and the interdependence that comes from trading creates the real capacity to raise living standards.

Trading across national boundaries is a necessity, not a luxury, if the world wants to better serve the needs of its citizens. And as we face into a global population reaching 9 billion by mid-century, an even greater proportion of the world’s food will need to move across oceans to feed the people. National self-sufficiency in food will not suffice. So trading has always been important, and will always continue to be so.

But something has happened in recent years: perceptions of trading have changed, and not for the better. The term “trading” has become wrapped up and confused in the public perception with speculation, hoarding, market fixing, monopolies, cartels and bad practice. There is increasingly little differentiation in perception between trading and the worst excesses of banking – the massive points of difference being misunderstood or ignored.

We should not be afraid to point out the difference. We should not ignore or underestimate the significant value we bring to people’s lives every day through moving food and crops from places of surplus to areas of deficit, or providing safe and efficient storage, minimising waste, maximising productivity, or supporting farmers with crop inputs, pre-financing or access to markets, managing risks or trading coal, electricity, natural gas, petroleum, iron ore and basic metals.

All these connected, basic commodities are fundamental to life and essential contributors to the global economy. So fundamental are they that we should question whether the term “trading” is even the correct descriptor for those of us dealing with physical products rather than purely abstract financial transactions. Because as the term becomes discredited and confused, so abuses by a minority of “traders” at any extreme of the “trading” spectrum impact negatively on the broader industry.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.