Overlander Leads Sucden to Metals-Trading Dominance: Commodities

Michael Overlander’s first job was sorting copper from brass in a scrapyard north of London. Four decades later, he runs the biggest floor-trading team on the world’s largest metals bourse.

Sucden Financial Ltd., where Overlander is chief executive officer, handles about 15 percent of contracts traded on the London Metal Exchange, which controls more than 80 percent of global trade in industrial-metal futures. The brokerage is expanding in Asia and moving to bigger Hong Kong offices after China’s share of global copper demand more than doubled to about 40 percent in the past 10 years.