The Lugano Commodity Trading Association

Foundation, purpose and members

The Lugano Commodity Trading Association (LCTA) was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit association with its seat in Lugano. Its stated purpose is to build and develop a platform that brings together commodity trading companies and the providers of services to them. It describes itself as the reference point of the trading sector in southern Switzerland.¹ In legal form it is an association under Art. 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code, which acquires legal personality as soon as its articles express the will to exist as a corporate body.² The association reports about fifty members. They include trading companies, shipping companies, banks active in commodity trade finance, insurance companies, logistics providers, auditors, fiduciaries and other service providers.³ The membership thus reflects the definition of a cluster that the Federal Statistical Office later adopted: a core of traders and a ring of support activities.

The association is affiliated with the national industry association, which was founded in Geneva and was known for many years as the Swiss Trading and Shipping Association (STSA) before adopting the name SUISSENÉGOCE.⁴ The Zug Commodity Association (ZCA) is its counterpart in central Switzerland. The three bodies work together on training and representation, and SUISSENÉGOCE and the ZCA supported the Lugano association's conference in 2026.⁵ For the federal authorities, which consult the industry on sanctions, transparency rules and statistics, this structure means that the Ticino traders are represented both directly and through the national association.

Governance and the shape of the cluster

The composition of the association's executive committee shows the shape of the Lugano cluster better than any statistic. According to the association's website the president is Matteo Somaini, General Manager Finance of DITH SA, the Duferco trading company now controlled by HBIS. The vice-president is Roberto Grassi, chief executive of the Fidinam group, one of the largest fiduciary and tax advisory groups in Ticino. The secretary general is Monica Zurfluh, head of international trade at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Canton of Ticino (Cc-Ti), and the chamber's director Luca Albertoni sits on the committee.⁶ The other members represent the trading firms Coeclerici Compagnie, NLMK Trading, Flame and Enet Energy, the refinery Valcambi, the shipping company Nova Marine Carriers and four banks: UBS Switzerland, the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, the Zürcher Kantonalbank and the Banca dello Stato del Cantone Ticino.⁷ The welcome message on the association's website is signed by Thomas Patrick as president, which may reflect a change in office that the committee page does not yet show.⁸

Three observations follow from this list. First, the cluster is held together by Ticino institutions, the Chamber of Commerce and a large fiduciary group, which supply the secretariat and the vice-presidency. Second, three of the four banks on the committee are based outside Ticino. The trade finance desks that serve Lugano traders sit to a large extent in Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich, and Chapter G.I discusses what this means for the financial centre. Third, the steel traders and the Duferco group have provided the leadership of the association for most of its existence. Marco Passalia, who represented the association as general secretary in the press between about 2016 and 2022, is a partner of an energy trading firm, and Matteo Somaini, quoted as president from June 2022 onwards, comes from the steel trader DITH.⁹

Notes

1. LCTA, "Chi siamo" (above) ("costruire e far crescere una piattaforma che riunisca società di trading di materie prime"). ↩
2. Swiss Civil Code of 10 December 1907, SR 210, Art. 60 para. 1 ("acquire legal personality as soon as their intention to exist as a corporate body is apparent from their articles of association"), https://lawbrary.ch/law/art/ZGB-v2024.01-en-art-60/print. ↩
3. LCTA, "Chi siamo" (above). ↩
4. LCTA, "Chi siamo" (above) (affiliation with the Swiss Trading and Shipping Association, STSA). The website of the STSA (https://stsa.swiss) now redirects to https://suissenegoce.ch. ↩
5. LCTA, "GCC" (above). ↩
6. LCTA, "Comitato esecutivo" (above). ↩
7. LCTA, "Comitato esecutivo" (above) (Laurence Debalme, UBS Switzerland SA; Fabiano Manfredi, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise; Konrad Wälti, Zürcher Kantonalbank; Massimo Penzavalli, Banca dello Stato del Cantone Ticino; Giuseppe Massa, Nova Marine Carriers SA; Simone Knobloch, Valcambi SA). ↩
8. LCTA, "Chi siamo" (above). The date of the welcome message is not shown on the page. ↩
9. GTR, "Success story, focus on Switzerland" (above); Franchini, Swissinfo, 1 April 2022 (above); RSI, "La guerra mette in crisi il trading", 6 April 2022, https://www.rsi.ch/info/ticino-grigioni-e-insubria/La-guerra-mette-in-crisi-il-trading--1789017.html (Passalia as secretary general); RSI, 24 June 2022 (above) (Somaini as president). One press report of February 2022 described Passalia as president: Tio.ch, 25 February 2022 (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.