Pay for Vitol's London commodities traders fell by over £1m per head
Commodities traders can be some of the most well paid people in the world when markets get volatile, but they can also suffer more harshly than most. At oil trading specialist Vitol, profits halved in 2025, and compensation for its UK staff dropped massively alongside it.
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'Vitol Broking Limited' released accounts for 2025 through the UK's Companies House this week. The firm reported a slight increase in headcount from 175 in 2024 to 179, but it also stated that spending on 'employee remuneration' fell by almost £100m. Compensation per head was a staggering £2.7m in 2024, but it slumped to £1.55m last year. It's still eye watering... just a bit less so.
Pre tax profits for the entity fell by much more than remuneration; it made £200m in 2024 but just £90m in 2025. The firm is a service provider to Vitol's global trading entity, and reports income as 'rendering of services,' rather than trading revenues, so it's not clear exactly how the London team performed.
The compensation was likely distributed evenly at the most senior level. Vitol is jointly owned by roughly 600 of its global employees, and no one person is allowed to own more than 5% of the firm's total value. From 2022 to 2024, it paid those shareholders a total of $20bn.
Bloomberg reported in July that Vitol's global profits in 2025 had more than halved to $4.2bn. Despite this, it said that the firm spent $5.9bn on share buybacks for its owners in 2025. It's not clear whether those buybacks, or dividends for stock owners, were reported under remuneration in its UK entity. Vitol declined to comment.
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