Ag Trading - Sydney, London & Chicago

When you say ag I'm assuming you're talking about grains, so that's what I'm basing this on (and if I'm wrong, let me know). I can't say I know everything about Australia and London because I don't trade those markets, but from my recollection, here's the majors:

For Australia, GrainCorp, Viterra (now owned by Glencore), CBH, and Cargill (they bought most of AWB's assets). Never done any business in that part of the world so I can't comment on the structure and culture of those specific divisions, but Viterra's US grain operations underwent some reorganization recently after they were bought by Glencore. Cargill and Viterra could give you exit ops within the company to other parts of the world if you do well as they have operations globally. GrainCorp and CBH seem more local. GrainCorp was almost bought by ADM last year and might still be in play. My understanding is they have a near-monopoly on grain infrastructure in SE Australia. Louis Dreyfus also has some facilities and offices there as well, and CHS did a joint venture there in 2013, buying 50% of Agfarm. I don't know if any of these are Sydney-specific but some/all probably have offices there. For what it's worth, Gavilon just bailed from Australia last year after getting killed by CBH, so if you're considering going with a company that doesn't have an established grower network, keep that in mind.

Cargill has a joint venture in the UK called Frontier Ag and I think they have a no-experience required procurement/trader track. ADM has an office there as well, I think they're outside of London. They also have extensive milling operations there. Greenfield Group is another one to look at, they are based out of Leeds and do wheat/canola and protein meals. I buy imports out of the UK on occasion but these are specialty grains and not conventional ag, and I usually do that through a broker so I can't speak to the culture of any of those desks.

I'm more familiar with the US market. ADM is moving their global headquarters to Chicago, not sure how many trading jobs are moving with them. The big grain houses all have a presence in Chicago but I don't know of any that have their "central" trading desks for physicals located there. Most have large elevators that are delivery points but outside of ADM (and that's a new development), nobody is headquartered there. South Korea opened a new trading company based in Chicago in 2011 to do export grains, I don't know much about them. If you're considering relocating to the US for ag trading, the Minneapolis/St. Paul area houses CHS and Cargill, (and Viterra's US grain desk), Bunge is in St. Louis, Gavilon is in Omaha, pretty sure Dreyfus still has most of their ag operations in Kansas City, and now ADM is moving to Chicago but was in Decatur. Tate and Lyle is in Decatur but has a Chicago office, they were considering moving their trading operations to there a couple of years ago but I never heard if that was finalized. All of the majors have trading floors scattered across the country, at export points, milling/processing plants, large terminals points, etc.

Additionally, and I'm sure this is the case in Chicago and likely in Australia and London, there are dozens of smaller firms that trade in the ag markets. Some have assets, some trade using other people's assets. PM me if you're considering any of those firms, I can share more information on what I know about them if you have a specific one in mind.