US probes manipulation of Platts benchmarks

The US Department of Justice is investigating suspected manipulation of energy pricing benchmarks published by S&P Global Platts, expanding the agency's crackdown on misconduct in the global commodities market, according to four people familiar with the matter. London-based Platts is a data and news provider which focuses on energy, metal and agricultural commodities. The company collects data from traders on their deal prices to determine a daily market price for a number of physical commodities. US prosecutors are probing suspected manipulative behavior by individual traders.