In the first quarter of fiscal 1994, the exposure from the problematic oil contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange resulted in a further 1.5 billion marks in losses, Mr. Neukirchen said. However, he said, hedges had now been put in place to limit future losses, and the process of unwinding U.S. oil positions has gone "faster than expected." First-quarter pretax profit was 64.6 million marks excluding losses from oil-trading, he said. That would create a full group first-quarter pretax loss of about 1.4 billion marks, Mr. Neukirchen said.