The CTRM Blog

Last week, I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Manav Garg, the CEO and Founder of Eka Software Solutions, about his company’s background, aims and objectives. Eka first appeared on CommodityPoint’s radar screen around a year ago as a vendor of non-energy Commodity Trading and Risk Management software highly ranked for its coverage of agricultural commodities. But Eka has made rapid progress and it has already established a presence in the metals space and now has a foothold in certain energy commodities too.

CommodityPoint recently had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Grim Gjonnes, EVP with responsibility for business development at European TRM software vendor – Navita. We asked him what kind of year 2009 had been for his company and what he saw as key trends in the industry for 2010. Dr. Gjonnes characterized 2009 as an “excellent but challenging year” for Navita. In common with almost every other business, Navita had to conduct its activities against the backdrop of a global financial crisis and credit crunch.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak with Peter Wais, Managing Director of ComFin. ComFin are located in Vienna – not so far away from myself here in Brno. The company was started 10-years ago and developed a paper trading TRM solution that has subsequently been expanded to cover physical trading as well for crude oil, chemicals, petrochemicals and shipping which is known as The BullDog. CommodityPoint first became aware of the BullDog via one of our surveys in which it was highly ranked.

SolArc announced yesterday that Sprague Energy has selected SolArc’s Solution for Natural Gas to manage that company’s natural gas supply business, including deal capture, nominations, scheduling/logistics, billing and risk management.

According to the press release, Sprague has been a SolArc customer for more than five years, using RightAngle to manage their oil trading, marketing and risk management operations.

I talked with Alan Gunn, Solarc’s managing director of natural gas sales, this afternoon and he indicated that this deal was one of “several” new gas deals they’ve closed in the last few months (including a previously announced deal with Southcross Energy). He also said, “…and the year isn’t over yet”. Stay tuned.

Triple Point Technology announced yesterday that they have licensed their Commodity XL(TM) for Hedge Accounting, Fair Value Disclosure and FAS 161 to Chiquita Brands International Inc. As noted in the press release, “Chiquita is a leading international marketer and distributor of high-quality fresh and value-added food products including bananas, fruits and green salads. With annual revenues of nearly $4 billion, Chiquita has operations in more than 80 countries worldwide”.