dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

28 min ago

It Turns Out That JPMorgan Bought the Nickel That Turned Out to Be Stones

By Joe Wallace

At the port of Rotterdam in November.PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/REUTERS

JPMorgan Chase owned bags of material kept in a Dutch warehouse that were supposed to contain nickel but turned out to be full of stones, people familiar with the matter said.

The London Metal Exchange said last week that sacks thought to hold 54 metric tons of nickel in an unnamed warehouse had failed to comply with its standards. The bags were in a shed in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported. The problem: They contained stones instead of a silvery metal used in steel and electric-vehicle batteries.

The LME didn't disclose the name of the company that believed itself to be the owner of nickel briquettes valued at $1.3 million at current prices. The firm was JPMorgan, according to the people, some of whom said the bank first bought the material several years ago.

The company that controls the warehouse, sprawling logistics firm Access World Group, was owned by miner and trader Glencore PLC at the time. In a statement, Access World said it is inspecting "warranted bags of nickel briquettes at all locations" and that it believes the issue to be "an isolated case and specific to one warehouse in Rotterdam."

Access World, rather than JPMorgan, is likely to face pressure to foot the bill because it is responsible for checking metal on entry and keeping it safe while it is in the shed. The LME has said it is working with the operator to find out what went wrong.

Wall Street banks aren't as active in physical commodity markets as they were a decade ago, when companies such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group shipped oil on tankers, stuffed metal into warehouses and shuttled sugar between continents. New regulations brought in after the 2008 financial crisis and a stretch of calm markets encouraged banks to pull back from trading commodities.

Still, JPMorgan remains a big player in metals, trading copper, aluminum, zinc and others on the LME as well as precious metals like gold.

JPMorgan was a major trading partner of China's Tsingshan Holding Group, and led discussions with other banks after a blowup in the metal giant's nickel trades spawned a crisis on the LME last year.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-03-20-2023/card/it-turns-out-that-jpmorgan-bought-the-nickel-that-turned-out-to-be-stones-whWn9TqZaksdTPcGyyAi?page=1