MF Global appoints Jeremy Searle to head crude team

SINGAPORE, July 14 (Reuters) - Brokerage MF Global Ltd (MF.N) has appointed Jeremy Searle to restart and lead its over-the counter (OTC) crude oil derivatives team, amid a rise in OTC trade clearing, the company said on Tuesday.

Searle's appointment as senior vice president on the crude desk expands MF Global's energy trading book in Asia, which included a large distillates and fuel oil team, headed by Calvin Tan and Alvin Lee respectively.

"We have aggressively pursued the build-out of this team," said Larry O'Connell, head of MF Global's Asia-Pacific operations, adding that this enables them to access risk transfer instruments in the energy asset classes in all three major time zones.

Searle who spent more than 15 years in Singapore and London as an oil broker, was previously managing director of GFI/Spectron in Singapore, having joined GFI in 2004. Before that, he worked for Tullet in the city-state.

The firm's two crude brokers left late last year and the brokerage had not been involved in crude till now. The team includes nine middle distillates and seven fuel oil brokers.

Searle was hired by MF Global before Mikal Boe, the head of commodities for Asia, who joined only last October, left the company in late June or early this month.

"Mr Mikal Boe, who previously served as managing director of Commodities in Singapore and was instrumental in developing this initiative, recently left the firm to pursue other interests," MF Global said in a statement.

When contacted, Boe said he was in talks to join another company, most likely based in Asia, but those plans had yet to be formalised.

It was not yet clear who would replace Boe, who had kicked off an aggressive recruiting policy when he joined the firm, hiring some 26 brokers for its energy and commodities team during his nine-month tenure at a time other brokers, such as GFI and Spectron, were folding up their Singapore teams. MF has grown its market share since the fourth quarter, even as overall swaps traded volumes in Asia fell on fears of default due to the credit crisis, the company told Reuters last month.