Zug, Switzerland 18/06/2013 - Michael Whelan has resigned from Metro International Trade Services, becoming the third senior executive to leave the warehousing firm in less than three months, industry sources said.
Whelan, who was the company's chief commercial officer and ran its New Orleans operations, resigned last Friday, sources told FastMarkets.
Whelan is the third manager leaving Metro since April, when Mark Askew in Detroit and Robert Burgess-Allen in the UK left the company.
Michael Whelan may be joining his father's warehousing company WF Whelan in Detroit, sources speculated.
His father Bill Whelan, the co-founder of Metro International, who sold the company to Goldman Sachs in 2010, is getting back into the LME warehousing business with his own firm in Detroit.
Whelan Metals, a subsidiary of warehousing and logistics business WF Whelan, has applied to handle, store and deliver LME-registered aluminium, zinc, lead and North American special aluminium alloy contract (Nasaac), the elder Whelan told FastMarkets in May.
The application was filed after the three-year non-competitive agreement with Metro International Trade Services ended in February of this year.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' Metro plans to continue business as usual, one source said.
The firm has been losing market share in LME stock holdings in recent months amid tough competition from Glencore Xstrata-owned Pacorini.
Metro has concentrated its inventory in Detroit while leaving Johor and Europe and reducing its holdings in New Orleans to a few thousand tonnes. Metro still stores almost all the 1.42 million tonnes of aluminium currently warranted in Detroit.
(Editing by Tom Jennemann)