From Reuters Africa:
Glencore sees healthy global demand for commodities
Glencore reported "robust" trading in the first quarter, reassuring investors with its view of broadly healthy demand for the commodities it mines, farms and drills, in a week when renewed fears over Europe's debt crisis dominate markets.
Meanwhile at Agrimoney:
The world's largest diversified commodities trader, which spans oil, grains and metals, gave no profit or revenue numbers in the statement, published ahead of its maiden shareholder meeting on Wednesday.
"Overall Chinese demand continues to be healthy," Glencore said referring to the world's largest consumer of the commodities it trades, adding it saw stronger physical demand in auto and aerospace sectors in the United States, although Europe remained weaker....MORE
Noble deepens cloud over Asian commodities giants
Noble Group forecast a revival in its agriculture division after the business fuelled a near-halving in group earnings, making the company the second of the big-three Asian farm commodity houses within hours to unveil weak results.Noble, the energy-to-cotton trader, said its earnings for the January-to-March period slid to $110.1m, from $203.2m a year before, despite a 14.1% rise to $22.8bn in revenues.The result followed the release by Wilmar International, a rival in the agricultural space, of a 34% drop in earnings for the quarter, reflecting poor oilseed crushing margins in China.And with both groups also having revealed disappointing results in the last quarter of 2011, and in Noble's case in the July-to-September period too, the results represent a setback to a long-heralded rise by Asian commodities traders.Both companies are members, with Olam International, of Asia's so-called "Now" group of commodities traders, seen as increasingly challenging the dominance of the West's big-four "ABCD" trading houses – Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus....MORE
