France’s Huge Futures Trader Plans Oil Deals

France’s top commodity trading house, which controls more than a third of the world’s sugar trade and about 20% of world cocoa supplies, has entered the oil market with a splash.

As part of a high-stakes diversification, Sucres et Denrees, known as Sucden, last week sealed an $800-million loan with 13 banks, the largest deal ever made to finance a private oil deal.

The loan cleared the way for a Sucden subsidiary in West Germany to buy 15% of Iran’s crude oil exports, valued at $2.6 billion, over the next 18 months.

The size of the affair--the largest private contract ever concluded for Iranian crude--was a reminder to competitors that Sucden, while a newcomer to oil, has a habit of doing big block deals on more familiar terrain.

The trading house, which is headquartered in Paris in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, dominates world sugar trade.

Last year, when Cuba could not come up with more than 500,000 metric tons of sugar it had agreed to sell to the Soviet Union, Sucden stepped in to supply the commodity to Moscow.

Sucden also bought 460,000 tons of cocoa from the Ivory Coast in 1988, controlling more than a half of the crop of the world’s largest producer and nearly one-fifth of world supplies.

Sucden, also a major rice trader, forecasts that 1989 sales will rise 52% to $8 billion (150 billion francs).

But the firm cannot expect to extend its reach any further in its traditional strongholds, according to Jean-Jacques Alphandery, general manager of Sucden’s commodity trading units.