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Leading global commodities brokerage Spectron has announced that it will launch a European fuel oil trading desk from the beginning of next month.

A team of nine experienced brokers, all previously with rival broker MF Global, have joined Spectron to launch the new fuel oil trading operation, due to launch in London on Wednesday, September 1st. The team will be headed by Danny Fenn.

In a statement, Fenn said “We are delighted to be joining Spectron — and are now part of not only the most energy focused of all the major global brokerages, but one which also has a fantastic reputation for customer service; it is great news for us and for our clients.”

Simon Davidson, Managing Director of Spectron Group (Europe and Asia), said “This is a very exciting hire for us — it is a high calibre team with a great name, market presence and years of experience, and so will be a perfect fit for our existing European and US oil products desks.”

Spectron operates a global marketplace for energy and environmental products from its offices in London, Singapore, Frankfurt and across the US. The company acts as an intermediary broker in the gas, electricity, oil, coal, metals, weather, petroleum and environmental products markets.

Founded in 1988, Spectron trades more than $500 billion of products per year.

The nine former MF Global brokers resigned from their posts last month in a spate of departures that was said to have been linked to a pay issue after MF Global recently changed its bonus scheme.

Following the resignations, MF Global confirmed that its London fuel oil desk would continue operating.

Less than two months ago, the company closed its Asia fuel oil broking desk in Singapore following the departure of all six of its brokers.

The office closure came just a few months after the appointment of Jon S Corzin, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and governor of New Jersey, as new Chairman and Chief Executive of MF Global in March 2010.

Corzin said in May that the group's fiscal performance for 2010 was “completely unacceptable” after the company posted a quarterly loss of $96.5 million.

MF Global later announced that it would be cutting its workforce of around 3200 by 10-15 percent, stop new hiring, reduce compensation, and postpone or eliminate initiatives that were not fundamental to the future direction of the business.