The buoyant oil traders
Not everyone in the oil industry is licking their wounds
TIMING IS EVERYTHING. When the late Marc Rich, an infamous commodities trader, set out to prise open the Fort Knox world of oil trading in the early 1970s, he had little more to help him than family money, the proceeds from the sale of a colleague’s car, and an address book full of contacts. But something momentous was happening. In the Middle East oil nationalism was stirring. Members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries were tearing up a post-war system in which Western oil companies, the so-called Seven Sisters, fixed the price of crude. An Arab oil embargo had pushed prices up to record levels. It was an ideal time for a renegade trader to go behind the backs of blue-chip producers, ship oil around the world on behalf of despots and sell it at market prices. With the motto “To make money out of other people’s money”, Rich created a business that was reliant on bank loans, secretive and controversial (he was indicted in 1983 for tax evasion and trading with Iran). It was also fabulously profitable.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The mavericks of oil”
Business May 9th 2020
- The pandemic will recast America’s health-care industrial complex
- The pandemic is a chance to revamp India’s pharmaceutical industry
- The French establishment closes ranks to help Lagardère
- Chinese carriers restart their engines
- Parks and resorts powered Disney’s growth. Then came covid-19
- Japanese offices struggle to adapt to social distancing
- Don’t stand so close to me
- The buoyant oil traders
More from Business
Germans are world champions of calling in sick
It’s easy and it pays well
Knowing what your colleagues earn
The pros and cons of greater pay transparency
A $500bn investment plan says a lot about Trump’s AI priorities
It’s build, baby, build
Donald Trump’s America will not become a tech oligarchy
Reasons not to panic about the tech-industrial complex
OpenAI’s latest model will change the economics of software
The more reasoning it does, the more computer power it uses
Donald Trump once tried to ban TikTok. Now can he save it?
To keep the app alive in America, he must persuade China to sell up