Nitesh Pankhania
Senior Consultant
MFT Energy
Date published: January 2025
Author: Nitesh Pankhania, Senior Consultant, Pangea
"Nitesh exceeded our expectations. He not only helped us define the role and the ideal candidate but also provided invaluable guidance, negotiating on our behalf and ensuring that the candidate’s skills and goals aligned with our company’s vision. He puts his time and effort on finding the right candidates for the open position. I recommend him to all energy trading companies."
Nitesh Pankhania
Senior Consultant
CHALLENGE
MFT Energy is a global Danish trading house. Since 2017, MFT have been expanding their operations into power, gas and renewables trading. Headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, MFT have expanded their geographical presence, with offices now in Turkey, Australia, the United States, and Singapore.
In 2023, Cagdas Ozan Ates, Chief Commercial Officer & Partner at MFT Energy, and Nitesh Pankhania, Recruitment Consultant at Pangea, met at E-World - an energy trading conference in Germany. They discussed MFT’s desire to expand their environmental commodities desk. A year later, MFT requested for Pangea to help them source a candidate with deep expertise in environmental products and trading REGOs, GOs and IRECs. The brief was to find a candidate who could help contribute to the new desk. The role and job title, based in Denmark, were yet to be defined.
SOLUTION
"Nitesh exceeded our expectations. He not only helped us define the role and the ideal candidate but also provided invaluable guidance, negotiating on our behalf and ensuring that the candidate’s skills and goals aligned with our company’s vision. He puts his time and effort on finding the right candidates for the open position. I recommend him to all energy trading companies."
Cagdas Ozan Ates, Chief Commercial Officer & Partner at MFT Energy.
Nitesh supported the team at MFT outlining the role. The candidate needed to have a client-focussed sales trader background and needed to have experience in environmental certificates trading.
In November 2023 Nitesh sourced an ideal candidate to help build the desk, someone who had interviewed for a similar role with Pangea, 12 months prior. The candidate had a proven track record in energy and environmental solutions, an extensive European network and had extensive expertise in scaling businesses up, so was ideal for this role at MFT.
Whilst Nitesh had found the ideal joiner for MFT and after seeing his experience in this area, MFT decided to develop a strategic business plan for a new department. This involved planning a new daughter company, where the candidate would serve as Director of Green Certificates, and they would build the desk and team from scratch. The daughter company would be created around two-three months after the candidate starts in their new role.
Although initially the candidate’s salary expectations didn’t align with MFT’s, Nitesh was able to explain the long-term vision and the value they could bring to the business. This ultimately led to successfully negotiating the candidate’s contract, including salary, equity, and other terms.
RESULTS
With the Director of the green desk now in place at MFT Energy’s new subsidiary, the business’ footprint within the environmental commodities desk continues to grow. Pangea’s success with this role has led to further collaboration on trading roles, including senior power/gas traders and analysts. As of October 2024, Nitesh continues to support the business in their search for power traders to join them.
"Nitesh is a professional on the people search area, I have enjoyed working with him through the years."
Cagdas Ozan Ates, Chief Commercial Officer & Partner at MFT Energy.
WHY PANGEA?
The energy market is undergoing a period of huge transformation. Recent years have seen extreme events hugely impacting the markets with prices at levels never seen before. To address the commodities traded as well as the niche departments supporting commodity trading, our energy Supply and Trading headhunting teams are separated as follows:
- Power Trading and Analytics
- Natural Gas/LNG Trading and Analytics
- Oil/Products Trading and Analytics
- Energy Quants and Trading Technology
- Risk and Middle/Back Office
PANGEA SUPPLY & TRADING ENERGY RECRUITMENT
To find out more about how Pangea could help you with your hiring needs visit our Supply & Trading Energy recruitment page to see:
How we support clients with their recruitment needs across permanent and contract roles in the data centre market. Case studies include:
"Pangea's presentation of candidates relevant to the criteria outlined and expansion of search to include Asian linked markets was impressive. There was good organisation working with our HR to arrange interview times."
Vijay Sandhu, Energy Trader at Gunvor
"Pangea have been an absolute pleasure to work with over this short period of time. They have delivered candidates of high quality and relevance, shown great candidate management ability and always take time to understand the specific needs of the business/vacancy. It’s great to work with a true recruitment professional."
Mani Dhunna, HR Lead at CF Partners
The latest live energy trading vacancies were working on.
EMEA Supply and Trading: Talent and market insights 2026: We’ve gathered compensation data, hiring trends, and market intelligence from across the EMEA commodities and energy trading sector through placements made, alongside ongoing conversations with both candidates and clients as part of our day-to-day recruitment activity.
The result is our 2026 EMEA Supply and Trading talent and market insights report: a detailed overview of recruitment across one of the world’s most dynamic financial and energy markets, covering market overview across EMEA trading desks, salary trends, compensation data, and the latest people moves shaping growth across Europe’s energy industry, with a specific focus on Europe/EMEA.
SPEAK TO THE TEAM
To view our EMEA Supply and Trading talent and market insights 2026 report, or discuss your hiring plans in more detail, please contact the team:
LNG Trading:
Gas Trading:
Power Trading:
- (Short-term) Nitesh Pankhania 📧 nitesh.pankhania@pangea-ts.com
- (Forward/Futures) Harrison Clarke 📧 harrison.clarke@pangea-ts.com
Oil Trading:
Risk management:
Energy Analytics and Quantitative Strategies:
Trading Technology (ETRM/CTRM, Software Engineering)