Mr Dirshen Pillay | Commodity Trader
Nedbank Capital | South Africa

Dirshen Pillay has worked in the commodity trading environment for 8 years and currently manages the trading desk at Nedbank capital.  Although experienced in other asset classes and roles when he first joined Nedbank Capital, Dirshen soon specialised in the commodity field particularly trading and structuring across major commodity groups in agriculture, base metals, precious metals and energy.  He has built, modelled, executed & traded lucrative deals within the precious and base metals arena for miners, as well as fuel hedges for energy users.  
Alongside pricing and structuring, Dirshen and his team have pioneered market making of commodities in ZAR on the South African Futures Exchange and traded the first Rand based energy options on SAFEX.  After building a profitable book in derivatives, the focused turned to physical commodities where two years were spent creating and building the physical commodity business that is now part of the larger business model.  
Dirshen majored in Actuarial Science and Finance at the University of Cape Town and is currently studying towards completing his CFA qualification. His innovative problem solving and revenue generation saw him win the prestigious Nedbank Achiever Award in 2011.