The 3,300 employees of an oil trading firm each made almost $800,000 last year – way more than Wall Street bank staff

• Commodity and energy trader Vitol Group made net profits of $15.1 billion in 2022, per Bloomberg.
• Its 3,300 employees were paid an average of $785,000 – nearly double the sum for the previous year.
• The salary and bonus figure dwarfs the average earnings of staff at big Wall Street banks.

Staff at Vitol Group received huge raises this year after the oil trading firm posted a record profit of $15.1 billion.

Vitol’s 3,311 staff each earned an average of $785,000 in salary and bonuses, according to Bloomberg, up from $394,000 in 2022.

Their pay vastly outstrips the average compensation at Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley that paid an average of $312,000 and $280,000 respectively last year.

Vitol owes its huge profits to surges in the energy and commodity markets sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year. It and rival traders Cargill, Glencore and Trafigura made combined profits of nearly $50 billion for 2022, per Bloomberg.

Vitol is the world’s largest independent oil trader, with its key executives based in London, according to the Financial Times. However, it also benefitted from big profits in other areas such as electricity markets, and liquefied natural gas trading, per the newspaper. 

More than 400 of Vitol’s employee shareholders, who are mostly based in London, Geneva, Singapore and Houston, also shared a $2.5 billion payout last year, Reuters reported. 

According to Bloomberg, the $15.1 billion figure for 2022 is more than the profits made by the company for the previous six years combined. 

Vitol was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 and is based in Switzerland.

Vitol Group declined to comment to Bloomberg and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.