conditions, Touton said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Acquiring Bordeaux-based Touton, which trades nearly 10% of the world’s cocoa, would cement Hartree’s expansion into soft commodities after its recent purchase of United Kingdom based ED&F Man Commodities, a centuries-old player in sugar and coffee.<\/p>\n
The global cocoa trade is experiencing a major shakeup as problems in West Africa, the world’s top growing region – push prices to historic highs, putting pressure on independent firms like Touton, which traces its history back more than 150 years.<\/p>\n
“Touton\u2019s legacy, market expertise, and global footprint would make it a natural fit for Hartree\u2019s growing soft commodities platform,” Stephen Hendel, Founding Managing Director at Hartree, said.<\/p>\n
Hartree is owned by investment firm Oaktree Capital Management and its founding partners – Hendel and Stephen Semlitz, both former co-heads of energy trading at Goldman Sachs, and Guy Merison, who also worked at the bank.<\/p>\n
Oaktree had $209 billion in assets under management as of June 30, according to its website.<\/p>\n
ING Corporate Finance M&A acted as sole financial advisor to Touton and its shareholders.<\/p>\n
Societe Generale acted as sole financial advisor to Hartree.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12831,"template":"default||default","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-12830","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"French cocoa trader Touton SA said on Monday it was in exclusive talks to be sold to commodity and energy trader Hartree Partners.\u00a0||French cocoa trader Touton SA said on Monday it was in exclusive talks to be sold to commodity and energy trader Hartree Partners.\u00a0","published_date":null,"news_description":"French cocoa trader Touton SA said on Monday it was in exclusive talks to be sold to commodity and energy trader Hartree Partners.\u00a0||French cocoa trader Touton SA said on Monday it was in exclusive talks to be sold to commodity and energy trader Hartree Partners.\u00a0","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18242,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12830\/revisions\/18242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=12830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}