Global commodities firm Gunvor Group announced that its CEO is stepping down amid a management-led buyout on Monday, just weeks after the Trump administration denounced the Swiss energy giant as the “Kremlin’s puppet.”
Majority owner, co-founder and Swedish billionaire Torbjörn Törnqvist is selling all his Gunvor holdings, with Americas head Gary Pedersen to become Gunvor’s CEO. A group of current employees are slated to acquire the firm, according to the company’s Monday announcement.
The insider buyout was conceived in 2022 during an “all-hands retreat in Morocco,” though the changes came mere weeks after the Treasury Department sharply criticized Gunvor and threatened to block its operations on Nov. 6 following reports the firm would buy assets from a major Russian energy company for $22 billion. Soon after the Treasury’s warning, Gunvor reproached the Trump administration’s characterization and said in an X post that it was dropping its bid to purchase Lukoil assets.
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“The time is right for this transition. A generational shift has well been underway, and we have the financial strength, liquidity, and depth of leadership to continue to advance our global growth strategy,” Pedersen said in a Monday statement. “Our goal is to uphold our leading role as a reliable and competitive participant in the global energy markets — today and well into the future.”
Törnqvist co-founded Gunvor in 2000, which was previously co-owned by Gennady Timchenko, who reportedly had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, though he sold his stake in 2014.
A company spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an email that the Treasury statement was a “shock” as Gunvor has worked to distance itself from Russia over the last decade and condemned the Russia-Ukraine war. The spokesman continued to say that after the Treasury’s “unfounded” comments, Gunvor’s leadership seized the opportunity to advance the restructuring plan.
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“We have been in talks with Torbjorn, who owned 86% of the company, about a management buy-out for a while, as early as 2022, making hires along the way to deepen that talent within our leadership team,” the spokesman told the DCNF. “To establish a definitive reset and a path forward for our company — in light of the impossible distraction of these misperceptions — we decided to advance the buy-out process.”
Notably, Gunvor has held talks weighing new investment in the American oil and gas sector, according to two sources familiar with the matter that spoke with Reuters.
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