A team led by star trader Yaoyao Liu at Vitol, the world's biggest oil merchant, took a hit of hundreds of millions of dollars early in the Iran war after bets in the petroleum market went awry.
Liu's trades are so big that executives at rival firms have tried to figure out what they are, but his positions are a closely held secret inside Vitol.
His team has since made back some of the loss, and the firm as a whole is up for the year, but the experience has been a chastening one for Vitol.
The firm, which plays a linchpin role in the global economy, has investments in storage tanks and gas stations, power plants, refiners, and oil fields in the U.S. and West Africa.
Vitol's operations churn out data that give an edge to Liu, a Cambridge chemical-engineering graduate who published a paper on quantum chemistry.
The firm has benefited from stowing away profits since the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine and doesn't rely as heavily on debt to fund its trades as some rivals.
