Platts Says Oil Companies Shunning Banks for Trading

(Bloomberg) — Oil companies have baulked at trading with banks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to Platts, a price-reporting company whose data is used to settle most of the world’s oil derivatives contracts.

Shares of Morgan Stanley have plunged 46 percent this week, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is 30 percent lower. Lehman, the 158-year-old firm that survived the Great Depression in the 1930s, made the biggest bankruptcy filing in history this week. Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed in March.


“These things are spreading very fast right now,” Jorge Montepeque, global director of market pricing at Platts, told a Standard & Poor’s commodity investing conference today in London. “We have a situation where people in the oil industry don’t want to trade with their banks.”

Platts sets benchmark prices against which many oil futures are ultimately settled. It collects bids and offers from companies that want to trade oil and related derivatives. Traders tell Platts when they aren’t willing to deal with other companies because it may affect prices.

Bloomberg