Trafigura - The glory of workers' cooperatives
What a glory of a mixed and free market economy this is:
The commodities trading firm Trafigura is to hand more than $1.7bn (£1.4bn) to its top traders and shareholders after the energy crisis, fuelled by the war in Ukraine, led to a surge in profits.
Trafigura, one of the world’s largest specialist commodity traders, posted a record $7bn net profit in its last financial year, more than the previous four years combined after making gains from the market volatility caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Its chief financial officer, Christophe Salmon, hailed an “exceptionally strong year”, as profits more than doubled and revenues grew to $318.5bn in the year to 30 September, up from $231.3bn a year earlier.
The $1.71bn payout to its 1,100 shareholders, including top employees, equates to about $1.56m a head if shared equally. That’s an increase of about 35% compared with 2021’s dividend of $1.12bn to around 1,000 top traders and investors.
Trafigura is, of course, a worker owned cooperative.
Trafigura is an independent, employee-owned physical trading and logistics business.
There are other companies in that space - Cargill comes to mind - which are family-owned and capitalist. Trafigura is, by any reasonable definition, a socialist organisation. Those who work there gain the full value of the sweat of their brow.
Isn’t this excellent? Folk get to structure their organisations as they wish, that free part of free market means that we do have different structures, some sating some ethical desires, some others, which then compete for the custom of the populace.
Given that Trafigura has the same ownership structure as John Lewis - or Richer Sounds, now that sale has gone through - no doubt those who praise worker coops and employee owned firms will be vocal in their support of this success.
They will won’t they, be logically consistent?