The Price Reporters

Every time we fill up our cars, we are unknowingly the end-user of multiple PRA benchmarks. Who are the PRAs and how did they come to play such a key role in the global commodities markets?

This book explains the importance of PRAs to the global commodities industry, highlighting why PRAs affect every consumer around the world; it introduces the individual PRAs - their history and the current state of play in the industry and looks at the challenges that the PRA industry is facing now and in the future, in particular how regulation might impact on the PRAs.

Every consumer in a modern economy is indirectly exposed to the work of a price reporting agency (PRA) each time they fill up their car, take a flight or switch on a light, and yet the general public is completely unaware of the existence of PRAs. Firms like Platts, Argus and ICIS, which are referenced every day by commodity traders and which influence billions of dollars of trade, are totally unfamiliar to consumers. *The Price Reporters: A Guide to PRAs and Commodity Benchmarks* brings the mysterious world of price reporting out of the shadows for the first time, providing a comprehensive guide to the agencies that set the world's commodity prices. This book explains the importance of PRAs to the global commodities industry, highlighting why PRAs affect every consumer around the world. It introduces the individual PRAs, their history and the current state of play in the industry, and also presents the challenges that the PRA industry is facing now and in the future, in particular how regulation might impact on the PRAs, their relationships with commodity exchanges, and their likely direction.

This is the first-ever guide to PRAs and is destined to become the standard reference work for anyone with an interest in commodity prices and the firms that set them.

"Owain Johnson has written an important book, offering the first practitioner's guide to the world of PRAs and commodity price formation." -Tilak K. Doshi, Managing Consultant, Muse, Stancil & Co.

Autorentext

Owain Johnson is Managing Director for Energy Research & Product Development at CME Group. He previously served as Managing Director of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange. He has worked for a number of pricing and media companies and has a degree from Cambridge University, UK.

Inhalt

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: PRAs and the commodity markets they serve

Chapter 2: The PRA business model

Chapter 3: How price benchmarks work

Chapter 4: Who are the price reporters?

Chapter 5: A brief history of energy PRAs

Chapter 6: PRAs in the metals and minerals markets

Chapter 7: PRAs in the agricultural markets

Chapter 8: Petrochemical and Plastics PRAs

Chapter 9: PRAs in Asia

Chapter 10: PRAs and environmental issues

Chapter 11: PRA pricing methodologies

Chapter 12: The Market-on-Close

Chapter 13: The PRAs and the exchanges

Chapter 14: PRAs and global regulation

Chapter 15: PRAs and European regulation

Chapter 16: Academic research into PRAs

Chapter 17: Conclusion the future of PRAs

Chapter 18: Further reading and bibliography

References

Index