Jim Rogers senior consultant at Dalian

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Investor Jim Rogers took a “senior consultant” position with China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange because he is “excited” about the exchange’s efforts to grow.
“I expect China to become the commodity trading center of the world once they open their currency and open their economy,” Rogers said by phone from Dalian, in northeastern Liaoning province today. “I’m keen on all the three exchanges but I’m excited about what they’re doing in Dalian.”
Rogers, who is chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, said he also had discussions with the Shanghai Futures Exchange and the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange, adding Dalian was the city he would want to live in if he was in China.
Rogers was hired as a “senior consultant,” the exchange said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The exchange was China’s largest commodity derivatives market in terms of volume in the first half, and trades contracts including soybeans, soybean oil, palm oil and soybean meal.
Dalian may introduce energy, coking coal and live-hog futures contracts to spur trading volume, exchange president, Liu Xingqiang, said in an Oct. 12 interview.
The bourse also aims to “be more than just agricultural or energy-oriented,” Liu said. “We’re working on products that can be traded more easily as investments; that are more financial in nature. It will be a global exchange,” Liu said.
--Li Xiaowei. Editors: Richard Dobson, Jake Lloyd-Smith.
To contact the Bloomberg News staff on this story: Li Xiaowei in Shanghai at Xli12@bloomberg.net