The Metallgesellschaft AG (MG) affair of 1993-94 conveyed three central messages to the petroleum industry: one pertaining to the relationship between hedging and speculating, one pertaining to corporate governance, and one pertaining to commodity market dynamics.
On the message of hedging vs. speculating, MG's US oil subsidiary, MG Refining & Marketing (MGRM), designed an innovative program aimed at rapid expansion in a mature but evolving business-the marketing of petroleum products. MGRM used a strategy combining over-the-counter (OTC) and futures instruments that contained a speculation on the relationship between near and distant prices. That speculation went against MGRM for a time, causing it to incur very large margin payment requirements and other cash flow disruptions.
Regarding the issue of corporate governance, the extent of MGRM's activities in financial energy markets appears to have caught its parent-and within the German system of corporate finance, its parent's banking shareholders-by surprise. When MGRM's speculation moved against it-for a period of time that may have been short-lived-it suffered large "mark-to-market" losses and large margin payment calls. The mark-to-market losses initially remained paper losses, but the margin calls were a drain on MG's cash flow that were larger than MG's management was willing to tolerate. According to some critics, MGRM's parent terminated the strategy so abruptly as to increase the size of the losses far beyond what would have been incurred with a more-patient unwinding.
On the aspect of market dynamics, MGRM's open interest in the oil financial markets-both exchange-traded and over the counter-became extremely large. When a single company commands such a large share of open interest, markets can become dysfunctional in one of two ways: the company can obtain the power to squeeze other participants, if those participants remain fragmented and disorganized; or the company itself can be squeezed, if other market participants begin to trade against the company in an organized manner. In MGRM's case, the speculative part of its strategy-the reliance on near-month contracts to hedge the bulk of its long-dated positions-required a rollover of its long position in the exchange-traded markets. This rollover was so large that other participants-especially funds that were adept at trading-anticipated its actions and, by "herding" their trades (not by design, but by widespread identification of the rollover), precipitated a change in the market structure from backwardation to contango. The emergence of that contango, in turn, caused the "rolling stock" aspect of MGRM's strategy to go from a source of trading profits to a source of trading losses.
Since MG AG's management terminated the MGRM program in early 1994, much has been written about the affair. In particular, the affair inspired Christopher Culp and Merton H. Miller (the latter adding a special notoriety to his involvement due both to being a Nobel laureate in economics and a defender of MGRM) to publish a valuable collection of analytical essays.1 The essays concentrate almost entirely on the issues of hedging versus speculation and corporate governance, a debate that will be covered subsequently in this article.
The issue of how MGRM's size affected the oil markets has received much less attention. To our knowledge, there have been only two privately circulated reports dealing with this dimension of the problem, one by this author and one by Philip K. Verleger Jr.2 The author's analysis of the relationship among MG's trades, hedge fund reaction to these trades, and the apparent impact on the structure or level of oil prices is also covered in a subsequent section.
Background
In the summer of 1995, MG settled a complaint lodged against it by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The settlement allowed the company to escape admissions of guilt and brought to light the basic story of the transactions whereby MG attempted to become a major player in the US oil market.3
According to the CFTC, MG Refining & Marketing (MGRM) "sold illegal off-exchange energy product futures contracts to more than 100 independent gasoline stations and heating oil distributors throughout the United States. The illegal futures contracts were part of MGRM's overall energy contract business, which MGRM hedged barrel-for-barrel with near-term futures contracts, including NYMEX [New York Mercantile Exchange] futures contracts and over-the-counter swaps."
MG was selling financial petroleum products to independent and quasi-independent retail service stations. This group's demand for these services emerged out of the financial distress following US oil market deregulation and commoditization in the early 1980s. The situation of independent gasoline retailers should be seen against a backdrop of a 15-year effort by the large integrated oil companies to retrench to their geographic strongholds and consolidate within them to a smaller number of larger and more-efficient stations.
The Metallgesellschaft AG (MG) affair of 1993-94 conveyed three central messages to the petroleum industry: one pertaining to the relationship between hedging and speculating, one pertaining to corporate governance, and one pertaining to commodity market dynamics. On the message of hedging vs. speculating, MG's US oil subsidiary, MG Refining & Marketing (MGRM), designed an innovative program aimed at rapid expansion in a mature but evolving business-the marketing of petroleum products. MGRM used a strategy combining over-the-counter (OTC) and futures instruments that contained a speculation on the relationship between near and distant prices. That speculation went against MGRM for a time, causing it to incur very large margin payment requirements and other cash flow disruptions.Regarding the issue of corporate governance, the extent of MGRM's activities in financial energy markets appears to have caught its parent-and within the German system of corporate finance, its parent's banking shareholders-by surprise. When MGRM's speculation moved against it-for a period of time that may have been short-lived-it suffered large "mark-to-market" losses and large margin payment calls. The mark-to-market losses initially remained paper losses, but the margin calls were a drain on MG's cash flow that were larger than MG's management was willing to tolerate. According to some critics, MGRM's parent terminated the strategy so abruptly as to increase the size of the losses far beyond what would have been incurred with a more-patient unwinding.On the aspect of market dynamics, MGRM's open interest in the oil financial markets-both exchange-traded and over the counter-became extremely large. When a single company commands such a large share of open interest, markets can become dysfunctional in one of two ways: the company can obtain the power to squeeze other participants, if those participants remain fragmented and disorganized; or the company itself can be squeezed, if other market participants begin to trade against the company in an organized manner. In MGRM's case, the speculative part of its strategy-the reliance on near-month contracts to hedge the bulk of its long-dated positions-required a rollover of its long position in the exchange-traded markets. This rollover was so large that other participants-especially funds that were adept at trading-anticipated its actions and, by "herding" their trades (not by design, but by widespread identification of the rollover), precipitated a change in the market structure from backwardation to contango. The emergence of that contango, in turn, caused the "rolling stock" aspect of MGRM's strategy to go from a source of trading profits to a source of trading losses.Since MG AG's management terminated the MGRM program in early 1994, much has been written about the affair. In particular, the affair inspired Christopher Culp and Merton H. Miller (the latter adding a special notoriety to his involvement due both to being a Nobel laureate in economics and a defender of MGRM) to publish a valuable collection of analytical essays.1 The essays concentrate almost entirely on the issues of hedging versus speculation and corporate governance, a debate that will be covered subsequently in this article.The issue of how MGRM's size affected the oil markets has received much less attention. To our knowledge, there have been only two privately circulated reports dealing with this dimension of the problem, one by this author and one by Philip K. Verleger Jr.2 The author's analysis of the relationship among MG's trades, hedge fund reaction to these trades, and the apparent impact on the structure or level of oil prices is also covered in a subsequent section. BackgroundIn the summer of 1995, MG settled a complaint lodged against it by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The settlement allowed the company to escape admissions of guilt and brought to light the basic story of the transactions whereby MG attempted to become a major player in the US oil market.3 According to the CFTC, MG Refining & Marketing (MGRM) "sold illegal off-exchange energy product futures contracts to more than 100 independent gasoline stations and heating oil distributors throughout the United States. The illegal futures contracts were part of MGRM's overall energy contract business, which MGRM hedged barrel-for-barrel with near-term futures contracts, including NYMEX [New York Mercantile Exchange] futures contracts and over-the-counter swaps."
MG was selling financial petroleum products to independent and quasi-independent retail service stations. This group's demand for these services emerged out of the financial distress following US oil market deregulation and commoditization in the early 1980s. The situation of independent gasoline retailers should be seen against a backdrop of a 15-year effort by the large integrated oil companies to retrench to their geographic strongholds and consolidate within them to a smaller number of larger and more-efficient stations.
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