How slick: Brit oil traders made £490m in a day
... but now they face probe in the US
THEIR office on an Essex industrial estate could not be further removed from the skyscrapers of Wall Street.
But a group of traders have been dubbed the Wolves of West Horndon after making an estimated £490million in a day by anticipating a fall in the price of oil because of the pandemic.
Three of the nine traders, Ari Demetriou, 31, Elliot Pickering, 25, and Connor Younger, 22, pocketed more than £70million each after the stock market coup, it is believed.
Mr Pickering, who lives with his mother, now drives a Rolls-Royce convertible while his colleague Mr Demetriou has recently invested in a Bentley 4x4 and a Porsche.
The group are affiliated with the trading firm Vega Capital London Limited. Their success has now been picked up by a federal court in the US after a class action was filed against Vega alleging the company worked to ‘intentionally manipulate’ the price of West Texas Intermediate, a grade of crude oil. The traders deny any wrongdoing.
The firm is based on a trading estate in West Horndon, outside Brentwood, with a small office in London’s Liverpool Street. But the workforce is thought to have struck it rich while working from home during the pandemic.
In the days leading up to April 20, the group’s traders anticipated the price of oil could drop to record lows and made a number of shrewd investments. By the close of trading, prices had fallen to a record low of minus $37.63, allowing the men to bank huge profits after buying oil at low prices and selling ‘futures’ – betting on the anticipated price of oil.
No criminal charges are known to have been filed against the traders and the Financial Conduct Authority, the City watchdog, yesterday declined to comment on whether an investigation had been launched.
A lawsuit was filed in the US by
Mish International Monetary, a coin, metals and jewellery dealer, alleging Vega had embarked on a ‘manipulative scheme’.
But Vega has denied the allegations, with lawyers for the company in the US asking a judge to throw out the complaint.
Yesterday six traders affiliated with Vega employed a London law firm specialising in ‘reputation protection’ to speak on their behalf. Their lawyer, Gideon Benaim, has previously represented Sir Cliff Richard.
In a statement, they said the profit was made after ‘blaring market signals’, adding: ‘Sometimes it works, sometimes i t doesn’t… They strongly deny any wrongdoing.’
Lawyers representing Vega in the US said in a court filing that the claim ‘ignored the obvious explanation for the price volatility: the existence of the global pandemic, its effects on the demand for oil, the oversupply of oil, the lack of storage space… the stay at-home orders mandated by governments around the world, the loss of jobs suffered as a result of the pandemic, and the grave uncertainty that the world faced as it was in the midst of grappling with Covid-19’.
‘Sometimes it works’