MILLING ABOUT: Metals veteran Schirmeister leaves JP Morgan

Christian Schirmeister reached an agreement to leave JP Morgan on Monday February 23, five years after joining the bank as part of the team it acquired from RBS Sempra, he confirmed to Metal Bulletin sister title Copper Price Briefing.

Christian Schirmeister reached an agreement to leave JP Morgan on Monday February 23, five years after joining the bank as part of the team it acquired from RBS Sempra, he confirmed to Metal Bulletin sister title Copper Price Briefing.

Schirmeister started his career as a physical metals trader at Metalgesellschaft in 1979 and, in 1995, moved to London to work with MG’s London Metal Exchange ring-dealing brokerage team, which was later acquired by RBS Sempra.

Alongside his trading and sales roles, he has chaired the LME copper committee since 2008 and is an active member of organisations including the International Wrought Copper Council and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.

He reached an agreement to step down as an executive director for the global commodities group on Monday and will look for new opportunities after a period of gardening leave, he said on the sidelines of the Metal Bulletin Copper Conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

His departure follows the sale of parts of JP Morgan’s physical commodities trading business to Mercuria in a deal completed last year, which resulted in the departure of several other high-profile JP Morgan personnel, including Blythe Masters, the head of the bank’s global commodities business.

Physical traders Ivan Petev and Will Gayner left the bank around the time of the sale and are now working at Macquarie. Martin Squires, an executive director for commodity hedge fund sales, also left the bank last year and has now joined BNP Paribas, Metal Bullletin understands.

Mark Burton
mburton@metalbulletin.com
Twitter: @mburtonmb

What to read next
Over a decade since its first attempt, Glencore appears to have taken another tilt at Rio Tinto.
Participants in the market for copper scrap and blister in China, the world’s largest importer of copper raw materials, expect there to be fiercer competition for material in 2025, industry sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Thursday January 9.
Africa’s first transcontinental rail network, known as the Lobito Corridor, which aims to eventually connect almost the entire regional copper-cobalt belt with additional links across sub-Saharan Africa, is on track to break ground early in 2026, a senior official at the US Department of State told Fastmarkets.
The availability of relatively untapped resources, a huge influx of Chinese investment and a rapid licensing system have helped the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to become one of the world’s three key producers of copper.
The European steel and aluminium scrap industries urged the European Commission on Wednesday January 15 against taking action to curb scrap exports after domestic industry metals producers backed measures to do just that.
Renewed US-China trade tensions with Donald Trump’s second presidential term could bolster Southeast Asia’s aluminium scrap industry in 2025, particularly amid still-growing Chinese demand, sources told Fastmarkets by Tuesday, January 14.