Having spent most of his working life with Unctad in Geneva, Lamon Rutten is moving to the private sector, joining the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) as joint managing director in Mumbai.

Rutten was most recently chief, commodity finance, risk management and information at Unctad.

MCX is India’s largest commodity futures exchange, and has grown in less than three years to a daily notional trading value of more than US$2.5bn (representing some 250,000 trades a day).

“I believe that with its group companies, MCX will be heralding in a ‘second green revolution” (in effect, the “father “of Asia “first green revolution, MS Swaminathan, believes so too), revolutionising the way that agriculture interacts with the modern market and the financial sector,” says Rutten.

“Much of the work that I did in Unctad feeds directly into the work with MCX: improving the performance of the futures market; ensuring its reach across the country, including through pilot projects targeting farmers; setting up collateral management schemes; working with (and training) banks in the area of structured commodity finance; working with the government on developing a proper legal and regulatory system; and otherwise doing what is necessary to create an efficient ecosystem for the use of financial instruments in commodity production and trade.

“Even my earlier work on oil and energy is relevant; among other things, MCX has a large crude oil futures contract and will introduce more energy products. And given the strength of the package that MCX can provide, we will also be looking for international partnerships, in Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere, beyond the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange of which we are already a shareholder.”