Board-level execution and advisory for transactions too complex to run from a single desk - metals, biofuels, critical minerals, M&A.
Zug, Switzerland.
Our Role
Engaged per mandate under Swiss law. No standard packages.
Producer-scale capability
MSE analysis published in
Trade Finance Global
Aluminium International Today
AlCircle
Fertilizer Daily
Why MSE Exists
Three forces have restructured cross-border commodity trade in this decade. None of them is temporary. Together they opened a gap between what the classical institutions do and what a transaction now requires - and that gap is where MSE operates.
CBAM, EUDR, CSDDD, RED III, CRMA. Compliance is no longer paperwork after the deal - it decides whether the deal can exist, at what landed cost, and against which documentation. Every deadline reprices a flow.
Regulatory Horizon 2026-2034 →Five sanctions regimes, origin-dependent pricing, chain-of-custody as a commercial category. Where material comes from - and how that is proven - now moves value as much as grade or freight.
Trading Infrastructure →Banks tightened commodity trade finance; collateral standards hardened. A transaction not engineered for financing from day one - title, documents, custody, settlement - does not get financed.
Bankability Framework →Each institution still does its part well. The trader takes title and margin. The consultant advises and leaves. The bank finances what is already clean. But the bargain underneath - the producer surrendering the customer, the margin and control of the flow to whoever bridges price, geography and credit - stopped serving the producer once regulation, origin and bankability moved to the front of the deal. That is the execution gap, and it has widened every year since 2020.
MSE was built for that gap. A Swiss commission agent under OR 425-438 takes no title and runs no book - so it takes over the trader’s architectural function without the trader’s position, and hands the producer what the trader used to take: the end customer, the margin and the capital. Not a fourth party in the gap, but the trading-house role rebuilt on the principal’s side. The full argument - The Execution Gap.
Our Approach
Three mandate formats. One execution standard.
Executive Mandate. MSE is retained to take operational responsibility for a defined function - supply chain, commercial strategy, market entry, post-merger integration - with its principal able to sit on the client’s executive team, title and authority included. Governed by a Swiss-law service agreement.
Commission & Trade Execution. MSE is appointed commission agent (Kommissionär, Swiss OR Art. 425-438) - finding counterparties, structuring, and executing on the principal’s account. Paid on delivered result: commission on volume, spread, or defined outcome.
Investment & Project Origination. MSE originates and structures investment and acquisition projects - due diligence, fund architecture, investor coordination, regulatory navigation, negotiation with asset holders and host governments - as institutional initiator across the lifecycle.
Whichever format applies, the work runs to one execution standard - the five phases set out under What we do.
Capabilities
The functions a principal entrusts to MSE - independent of the commodity, ordered by the life of a transaction.
Qualify the counterparty and the opportunity.
Build the deal, its financing and its compliance frame.
Raise the capital and move the cargo.
Execute, hedge and settle.
Run the book and hold the risk.
ESG & Traceability
As CBAM, EU due diligence, and ISCC EU reshape commodity trade, MSE builds sustainability into the transaction itself - from origin verification to carbon-adjusted settlement.
Lot-level origin tracking in shipping and customs documents; audit-ready MRV aligned to ISCC EU, ASI, and the EU Union Database, producer to delivery.
Scope 1-3 accounting per shipment with CBAM-compliant embedded reporting, verified carbon-intensity certificates for EU import declarations, and route optimisation per leg.
Provenance bound to the physical control chain and moving with the cargo - audit-ready, bankable ESG verification recognised by financiers and counterparties.
Deposit evaluation, fund architectures, Swiss-law investment structures. Southern Europe, Central Asia, EMEA.
Explore →Primary metals to engineered products. Value chain architecture, LME management, vertical integration.
Explore →Fuel ethanol, bioethanol, SAF. ISCC EU certification, RED III compliance, GHG pathway structuring.
Explore →Cement, clinker, aggregates. EU market entry, CBAM carbon reporting, multimodal corridor design.
Explore →Rare earths, rare and strategic metals, battery raw materials, advanced ceramics. Non-China supply chains, bankable offtakes, vertical integration.
Explore →Low-carbon ammonia, urea, nitrates and blends. CBAM and RFNBO compliant supply into EU importers and distributors.
Explore →Port and terminal management, multimodal corridors, collateral control, and commodity financing through physical asset infrastructure. The node every physical flow passes through.
Swiss trading-house architecture. SPV structuring, bankable offtakes, trade finance, compliance and traceability - the settlement layer within which every mandate, in every sector, is executed.
Competence & reach
Explore by region, or trace the logistics corridors.
Indicative geography. Regions, ports and corridors reflect the competence and 30+ years of execution experience of MSE's principal and expert network - not a statement of current volumes, mandates or counterparties.
Mandate Examples
Indicative engagements drawn from the mandate book. The full record remains confidential under client agreements.
MSE Platform · Self-qualification
Model the obligation, screen the feedstock, test bankability - before the conversation. Real transaction parameters, no registration.
Engagement Pathfinder · Guided
Four questions - role, domain, region, objective - return your pathway: how MSE engages, how the role evolves from advisory to execution, and the next steps.
Bankability Framework · Structuring pre-read
Walk a self-liquidating trade through the eligibility logic lenders actually apply - six knock-out gates, the collateral and advance-rate engine, six credit pillars - and leave with a verdict, an indicative advance-rate zone, and the conditions precedent a term sheet will carry.
Also in the toolkit: Transaction Architecture Constructor · EU Regulatory Horizon 2026-2034 · CBAM & RED III calculators · ISCC checklist · Lexicon of Execution · embeddable versions. All tools →
Founder & Director
Founder & Managing Director
30+ years across the full commodity execution chain. Former C-level executive at a Top-3 global primary aluminium producer (Zug) - Director of Sales & Marketing, General Director of the Trading House, COO/Director SCM.
Founded MSE in 2018 under Swiss institutional form. Mandates since include mandated adviser to an international cement producer (2021-22), MD at a Swiss commodity & technology platform (2023-24), CCO at a Central European advanced-ceramics producer (2022-25), and Director, Special Projects at a Pan-European terminal operator (2019-20).
Expert Network
No transaction turns on a single discipline - or a single person. Under each mandate, MSE fields senior specialists matched to the structure at hand - each one personally known to MSE's founder, from years of working together, and engaged under a long-term Senior Expert Agreement. The relationships pre-date the mandate.
Origination and sourcing. Industrial operations and asset diligence. Cross-border legal, tax and trust structuring. Structured trade finance and capital introduction. Director level and above - Switzerland, London, the United Kingdom.
Specialists are brought in under confidentiality; identities are disclosed to counterparties only as the transaction requires.
MSE Perspectives
Three forces took the trader’s function apart - regulation, origin, bankability. What replaces it is not another intermediary but an architecture: the Japanese trading-house model without the position, rebuilt so the margin, the customer and the capital stay with the producer. A Swiss commission agent under OR 425-438 is the form built for it.
Read →$8 billion of underwriting offered against a $3 billion club deal, while the gap holds at $2.5 trillion and the mid-market is turned away - what is missing is not capital but a structure a bank can buy.
Read on Trade Finance Global →328 Mt of low-carbon ammonia announced, 10.8 Mt past final investment decision - the molecule is proven, the route to market is not. Offtake, verified emissions and the CBAM file decide which tonnes actually get built.
Read on Fertilizer Daily →CBAM’s first compliance year, read with a calculator: a border built to see carbon does not yet see most of it - and rewards paperwork over cleanliness. Written for producers in Asia and the Middle East.
Read on AlCircle →An asset-by-asset reading of Tajikistan’s mining - gold, silver, antimony, tungsten, lithium, rare earths: which deposits exist, who controls them, and at what stage.
Read →2 perspectives · 1 technical note · 2 regional analyses · 4 MSE commentaries · 7 external publications in industry press
Most companies master one layer. MSE architects all three - sector, infrastructure, and trading structure - into a single bankable chain. The map at the top of this page holds all three at once: the regions and their commodities are Sol, the ports and corridors that move them are Luna, and the contract, finance and settlement structure that binds them is Lux.
Contact
All enquiries are reviewed at principal level, under strict confidentiality. MSE holds a limited number of concurrent mandates to keep every engagement principal-led. A first conversation costs nothing and commits nothing - it happens under NCND, before any detail is exchanged.
Where complexity meets execution.
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