Gunvor (oil trader)

Gunvor Group Ltd

Type	Private
Industry	Commodity
Founded	2000
Founder	Gennady Timchenko Torbjörn Törnqvist
Headquarters	Geneva Switzerland (Head office) Nicosia, Cyprus (Registered office)
Area served	Global
Key people	Torbjörn Törnqvist
Services	Energy trading, Raw materials
Net income	US$$433 million (2012)
Number of employees	1,600 (2012)
Website	gunvorgroup.com

Gunvor Group Ltd is a global commodity trading company registered in Cyprus, with its main trading office in Geneva, Switzerland. Gunvor also has trading offices in Singapore, the Bahamas, and Dubai, with a network of representative offices around the globe. The company operates in the trade, transport, storage and optimization of petroleum and other energy products, as well as having investments in oil terminal and port facilities. Its operations consist of securing crude oil upstream and delivering it to market via pipelines and tankers.

The company, which was founded in 2000, is the fourth largest crude oil trader in the world after Glencore, Vitol, and Trafigura. The company was co-founded and controlled by Gennady Timchenko together with Torbjörn Törnqvist (after whose mother the company is named); however, due to United States sanctions, Timchenko sold his stake in the company to Törnqvist in March 2014.

Gunvor's largest single supplier of crude oil was once Russia, though the company now originates most of its crude oil from the Americas, with less than 13 percent coming from Russia. It also trades African, Asian, and South-American crude and is active on all continents. In 2011, Gunvor was trading less than 20% of Russia's seaborne oil.

Gennady Timchenko and Torbjörn Törnqvist began working together in 1997, and formalized Gunvor in 2000. In 2003, the company started operations in Geneva.

According to the Financial Times, until 2007 the company was a "niche player" focused on exporting Russian oil through Estonia, relying on the expertise of its two founders in the oil business, Russian market and transit logistics. Torbjörn Törnqvist is a Swedish citizen born in 1953. He has traded oil across the world for over twenty years, beginning his career at BP. Gennady Timchenko is a Finnish citizen born in the Soviet Union in 1952. He has more than 20 years experience in the oil industry, beginning with the Kirishi refinery during perestroika, and was one of the first Russians to export oil to Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed.