By Jack Farchy Financial Times, London Sunday, June 17, 2012
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a5f8007e-b86f-...144feabdc0.html
The prospective buyer of the London Metal Exchange has warned that it will clamp down on the lucrative metal warehousing business that has attracted investments from Goldman Sachs and Glencore.
Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, which on Friday announced an agreement to buy the 135-year-old group for L1.4 billion, said it was planning to change the rules governing the LME's network of warehouses in an attempt to shorten the wait to take delivery of metal.
Long queues to remove aluminium from LME warehouses have sparked angry confrontations between consumers of metal, such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Motors, and warehouse owners, including Goldman, JPMorgan, Glencore, and Trafigura.
Banks and trading houses have rushed to buy warehousing companies to profit from the fact that large quantities of metal have become surplus to requirements since the financial crisis. But now that the metal is needed, consumers say, it can take more than a year to be delivered.
Read more at
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a5f8007e-b8...144feabdc0.html
