Already handling ag commodities via partners north of the border, U.S. commodities brokerage and financial services firm INTL FCStone is bringing its own name into the Canadian market.
The New York firm announced Tuesday it became a member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) effective May 17, clearing the company to offer its own exchange-traded financial products in all Canadian provinces.
Services now offered in Canada include financial futures clearing and execution, over-the-counter (OTC) execution, commodity risk management planning and market intelligence in agriculture as well as foreign exchange, energy, metals, interest rates and global payments services.
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The company said its Canadian arm operates a Toronto office plus a “secondary” office in Montreal serving English-, French- and Spanish-speaking customers.
Ernesto Rambaldini, CEO for INTL FCStone Financial (Canada) , said the company is no stranger to the Canadian market, already covering over one million acres of farmland in Western Canada via its Know-Risk Crop Marketing services.
Know-Risk is offered in partnership with Irricana, Alta.-based crop marketing, agronomy and consulting firm Decisive Farming, with which FCStone has had a strategic alliance in place since 2013.
INTL FCStone also already has “a significant footprint” in Canada providing hedging services to commercial grain companies, Rambaldini said Tuesday in a release.
Its new IIROC membership, he said, “will allow us to provide a more holistic offering to these agricultural producers as well as other commercial players in need of risk management tools.”
The company will also be able to cater directly to institutional investors such as pension funds, hedge funds, index funds, and commodity trading advisors (CTAs) “looking for exposure in the commodity space,” he added.
INTL FCStone bills itself as one of the largest U.S.- based commercial brokerage firms, working with companies producing and processing corn, wheat and soybeans as well as sugar, coffee, dairy, lumber, cotton and crude oil.
Its services include commodity risk management, hedging, cash grain brokerage and other marketing services for suppliers, traders, elevators and end-users such as processors.
Other divisions within the company offer merchandising services in products such as biodiesel feedstock, distillers grains (DDGs), protein meals and other feed ingredients, and grain freight brokerage services including car acquisition and rate and traffic assistance. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
