Page 32 - 期货和衍生品行业监管动态（2024年6月刊）
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期货和衍生品行业监管动态
Case Background
Misappropriation of Material Nonpublic Information
The order finds that between 2014 and April 2019, directly and through
intermediaries, Trafigura improperly obtained nonpublic information material to the
gasoline market from an MTE employee in breach of the employer’s rules. Among
other things, Trafigura received MTE’s pricing formulas used to sell its physical
gasoline to another trading entity in Mexico, as well as the MTE’s monthly import
“program,” meaning the volumes, types, and destination ports for gasoline the MTE
planned to import in the next month. Trafigura also sometimes received competitor
pricing information in the context of bilateral negotiations. The MTE considered this
information confidential and material to its own business, while the information was
material to Trafigura’s trading and business decisions, such as its negotiation and
pricing strategies for gasoline products. Trafigura traders in Houston, Texas entered
into physical and derivative gasoline transactions while knowing this confidential
information.
Manipulative Conduct
The order further finds that Trafigura manipulated the benchmark price of U.S.
Gulf Coast high-sulfur fuel oil throughout the month of February 2017. From
approximately January to March 2017, Trafigura developed and deployed a large fuel
oil export program designed to export fuel oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Singapore
in order to profit from an observed open arbitrage for fuel oil. In connection with its
arbitrage strategy, Trafigura established a long derivative position in U.S. Gulf Coast
high-sulfur fuel oil, in part as an economic hedge for its anticipated purchases of
physical fuel oil to export to Singapore. However, the long derivative position
Trafigura entered was in excess of its short physical position that resulted from its
intent to buy fuel oil in the U.S. Gulf Coast for arbitrage—the excess essentially
constituting a long speculative bet on fuel oil prices in February 2017.
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