Hooked on trading
Thirty years ago Gavin Prentice visited the LME as a schoolboy and the love affair has not stopped for the MD of broker Marex Spectron
It could have been the full-throttle cries of the traders, or probably their dramatic hand gestures. Whatever it was, Gavin Prentice was instantly hooked while on a chance visit to the London Metal Exchange trading floor during a school holiday.
And even after 30 years in commodities trading, that initial attraction has not worn off for the managing director and global head of sales of commodities broker Marex Spectron and board member of the LME.
"This is a people's business and I love it," said Prentice in an interview with the South China Morning Post at his Bishopsgate office in London.
Prentice, who has just turned 49, has virtually spent his entire adult life in commodities trading. After finishing his A-levels at 18 he joined commodities company Amalgamated Metal Trading (AMT), a category 1 ring dealing member that allows firms to participate in open outcry trading at the ring on top of electronic and telephone trading.
He started as a clerk before becoming a floor trader. He went on to work as a metals trader in New York from 1988 to 1993 and returned to London in 1994. There he held a number of senior positions before being appointed global head of metals at Refco Overseas in 2002.
Prentice became the head of metals for Marex when the company was established in 2006 and, following the company's merger with the energy trader Spectron in 2011 to create Marex Spectron, is now the managing director of the entity's London office and global head of sales.