A review was then conducted by Price Water House Coopers. They opined that since specific methods to value derivatives trading were not present in FRS 39, CAO should have adopted the Industry standards, rather than saying that there were no clear norms. The key problem PwC noted was that the valuation of the derivatives was wrong in that it treated the intrinsic value as the fair value of its options. It should have instead taken into account the intrinsic value and the time value. This would mean that the length of the time to maturity of the option, the volatility in the spot price of the underlying commodity, interest rates and other factors would have been taken into account.
PwC represented CAO’s valuation against its own to show the variation:
Q1 Q2 Q3 First 9 months
CAO EBT 19.0 19.3 11.3 49.6
PwC adjusted EBT -6.4 -58.0 -314.6 -379.0
The oil prices had been steadily rising in 2004. If CAO had used its intrinsic approach, it still would have shown losses. To cover its losses the company adopted a risky strategy to sell long-term options to generate premiums that would cover the cost of closing out the loss-making option contracts. CAO was trying to compensate for their existing losses by collecting premiums on options that had the potential to generate further losses in the future.