ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the background to the research efforts by regulators around the world and the impact on the price reporting agency (PRA) sector of the most important of their subsequent recommendations – the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Principles. Apart from the corporate fines, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also aggressively pursued the individual traders and trading managers responsible for falsely submitting reports to Warren Platts and to other PRAs in the US gas and power space. Sniffing which way the regulatory wind was blowing, the three largest PRAs – Platts, Argus and Independent Chemical Information Services (ICIS) – got together and in April 2012 they presented their own Independent Price Reporting Organization (IPRO) Code. In November 2012, Seth Freedman, who had been working at ICIS Heren assessing prices in the UK gas market since the start of the year, reported his concerns about unusual trading patterns to the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA).
