ABSTRACT
Elena Lobodina has held a number of senior management positions in commodity trading firms, after coming to prominence as the head of the sales, trading and business development teams in Moscow at Russian oil producer TNK-BP. Elena went on to become head of origination and business development for Gazprom Marketing & Trading in London. Elena then moved to Switzerland to become chief executive of NLMK Trading, which manages the export business of Russian metals producer NMLK Group. When Elena first joined the Russian oil producer TNK-BP in 2005, it was clear that they weren’t set up for trading success. Once they had the right trading mentality in place across the organization, they were able to innovate much more easily. One of their most significant trading successes was the introduction of floating prices to the Russian oil markets. Floating-prices are where the price of the oil is based on a variable benchmark, like the price of Brent crude oil.
