Singapore’s Sentosa Ship Brokers has wasted little time expanding its fledgling Geneva office with five new hires from local rivals.
Ermanno Taschini and Christopher Crispu are joining from French shipbroker Barry Rogliano Salles, while Filiberto Senzioni has been recruited from Bravo Tankers.
Taschini will be focusing primarily on dirty petroleum products and Senzioni clean petroleum products in the handysize and MR tanker markets. Crispu joins Sentosa’s tanker operations desk.
Two more brokers are set to join the office but are “still under contractual obligations with previous employers”, according to Sentosa.
Sentosa established its first European office in the Swiss shipping hub in November.
The first recruit for the office was Will Hermon, previously a director and head of clean tankers at Clarksons Singapore, who oversees the clean desk in Geneva.
“We are thrilled to have Taschini, Senzioni and Crispu join us in Geneva,” Sentosa managing director Miles Wright told TradeWinds.
“They are off to a flying start — having currently concluded 13 spot fixtures and one time charter — not bad for the first two weeks of trading.
“The time charter is a newbuild suezmax for 30 to 100 days for gasoil, and they're actually working another one for same period with same owner/charterer, so could be two of the same by next week.”
Wright previously told TradeWinds that he felt Geneva was “under-broked” given the scale of the tanker chartering market there.
“We have many existing clients based in Geneva and of course aim to expand that client base as well as start to have more focus and coverage of the West of Suez tanker markets on clean, dirty and projects,” he said.
Geneva is Sentosa’s second overseas office and follows its move to set up shop in India in late 2020.
LPG and LNG brokers
The company recruited Sanjay Mathur, the former head of shipping at Indian Oil Corp, to take charge of the operation in New Delhi.
Wright says Sentosa also continues to look for LPG and LNG brokers for its offices in Singapore as well as Geneva and India.
“The office we're signing on in Geneva has a 10-desk trading floor and we hope to fill it by the end of the year,” he added.
On the current market situation, Wright said that, bar a handful of short-lived regional improvements, all sectors of the tanker market remained in the doldrums, with global demand for oil and products impacted by the pandemic.
“The hope going into this year was that the vaccine would accelerate our path out of Covid leading to the much-needed recovery in tanker markets,” he said.
“Sadly, given the devastating spike in cases in some countries this year and the slower than expected roll out of mass immunisation, the recovery has largely been delayed on a global scale and demand for oil and products predominantly remains domestically within countries that have relaxed restrictions but not fully opened their borders.”
Wright said he expected an improvement towards the end of the year and was very confident from 2022 onwards given the “limited orderbook and the gargantuan global effort in the race to mass vaccinate”.
