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Yasuo Hamanaka
(born 1950) is a former chief copper trader at Sumitomo Corporation, one of the largest trading companies in Japan. He was known as "Mr. Copper" because of his aggressive trading style, and as "Mr. Five Percent" because that is how much of the world's yearly supply he controlled. On June 13, 1996, Sumitomo Corporation reported a loss of US$1.8 billion in unauthorized copper trading by Hamanaka on the London Metal Exchange. His culpability as to whether this responsibility was authorized is in doubt. In September 1996, Sumitomo disclosed that the company's financial losses were much higher, at $2.6 billion (285 billion yen). Hamanaka was sentenced to eight years in prison in 1998 and was released in July 2005, one year early. See also * Kweku Adoboli lost $2 billion for UBS * Jérôme Kerviel * Nick Leeson caused a loss of £827 million for Barings Bank, leading to its collapse * List of trading losses * Sumitomo copper affair References External links "How Copper Ca ...
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Copper
Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement. Copper is one of the few metals that can occur in nature in a directly usable, unalloyed metallic form. This means that copper is a native metal. This led to very early human use in several regions, from . Thousands of years later, it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, ; the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, ; and the first metal to be purposely alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, ...
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Sumitomo Corporation
is one of the largest worldwide '' sōgō shōsha'' general trading companies, and is a diversified corporation. The company was incorporated in 1919 and is a member company of the Sumitomo Group. It is listed on three Japanese stock exchanges (Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka) and is a constituent of the TOPIX and Nikkei 225 stock indices. Today, the company is one of the top three '' sōgō shōsha'' companies in the world. History The Sumitomo Group, of which Sumitomo Corporation is a key member, dates to the 17th century establishment of a book and medicine shop in Kyoto by Masatomo Sumitomo. Sumitomo's brother-in-law Riemon Soga developed a technology to extract silver from copper, and Soga's son (who married Sumitomo's daughter) Tomomochi Sumitomo expanded this smelting business to Osaka. From this start, the Sumitomo family expanded its business into copper mining (the Besshi copper mine), followed by textiles, sugar and medicine trading. The Sumitomo family was close to th ...
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Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea in the south. The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—and List of islands of Japan, thousands of smaller islands, covering . Japan has a population of over 123 million as of 2025, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh-most populous country. The capital of Japan and List of cities in Japan, its largest city is Tokyo; the Greater Tokyo Area is the List of largest cities, largest metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37 million inhabitants as of 2024. Japan is divided into 47 Prefectures of Japan, administrative prefectures and List of regions of Japan, eight traditional regions. About three-quarters of Geography of Japan, the countr ...
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London Metal Exchange
The London Metal Exchange (LME) is a futures and forwards exchange in London, United Kingdom with the world's largest market in standardised forward contracts, futures contracts and options on base metals. The exchange also offers contracts on ferrous metals and precious metals. The company also allows for cash trading. It offers hedging, worldwide reference pricing, and the option of physical delivery to settle contracts. Overview Ring trading Trading times are 11:40 to 17:00. The LME is the last exchange in Europe where open-outcry trading takes place.BBC Radio 4 '' Today'', broadcast 25 October 2011. The ring was temporarily closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, LME proposed closing the ring, Europe's last open-outcry trading floor, and moving permanently to an electronic system. However, the ring reopened in September of the same year after resistance from members. In addition to the 9 companies that have exclusive rights to trade in the ...
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Japanese Yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro. The New Currency Act of 1871 introduced Japan's modern currency system, with the yen defined as of gold, or of silver, and divided decimally into 100 ''sen'' or 1,000 ''rin''. The yen replaced the previous Tokugawa coinage as well as the various ''hansatsu'' paper currencies issued by feudal ''han'' (fiefs). The Bank of Japan was founded in 1882 and given a monopoly on controlling the money supply. Following World War II, the yen lost much of its pre-war value as Japan faced a debt crisis and hyperinflation. Under the Bretton Woods system, the yen was pegged to the US dollar alongside other major currencies. After this system was abandoned in 1971 with the Nixon shock, Nixon Shock, the short-lived Smithsonian Agreement temporarily reinstat ...
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Kweku Adoboli
Kweku Adoboli (born 21 May 1980) is a Ghanaian investment manager and former stock trader. He was convicted of illegally trading away US$2 billion (£1.3 billion GBP) as a trader for Swiss investment bank UBS. While at the bank he primarily worked on UBS' Global Synthetic Equities Trading team in London, where he engaged in what would later be known as the 2011 UBS rogue trader scandal. After serving a prison sentence, he lost several appeals against the UK Home Office decision to deport him to Ghana. Early life and education Kweku Adoboli was born on 21 May 1980 in Tema, Ghana, to John Adoboli, a senior United Nations official. He spent his early years in Israel, Syria and Iraq, before moving to the United Kingdom in 1991. He attended Ackworth School in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, where he was head boy. In 2000, after finishing school, he started reading Chemical Engineering at the University of Nottingham, but switched to e-commerce and digital business studies. I ...
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Jérôme Kerviel
Jérôme Kerviel (; born 1977) is a French rogue trader who was convicted and imprisoned in the 2008 Société Générale trading loss for position of trust, breach of trust, forgery and unauthorized use of the bank's computers, resulting in losses valued at euro, €4.9 billion. Early life Kerviel grew up Pont-l'Abbé, Brittany. His mother, Marie-Josée, is a retired hairdresser, and his father, Charles, was a blacksmith. He has an older brother, Olivier. Kerviel was married, but he and his wife marital separation, separated in 2008. Kerviel graduated in 2000 from Lumière University Lyon 2 with a Master of Finance specializing in organization and control of financial markets. The university's financial program, which was initiated in the 1990s with the support of France's larger banks, was intended to prepare students for middle office, middle and back office positions in the trading departments of financial institutions. Prior to that he received a bachelor's degree i ...
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Nick Leeson
Nicholas William Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is an English former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorised and speculative trades resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest existing merchant bank. He was convicted of financial crime in a Singapore court and served over four years in Changi Prison. Between 2005 and 2011, Leeson had senior management roles at League of Ireland football club Galway United. After it suffered financial difficulties, he resigned from his position as chief executive officer. He is also active on the keynote and after-dinner speaking circuit, where he advises companies about risk and corporate responsibility. Since 2023, he has been a private investigator dealing with cases of financial misconduct. Early life Nick Leeson was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, to working-class parents on a council estate. His father was a self-employed plasterer, his mother a nurse. He attended Parmiter's School in near ...
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Barings Bank
Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London. It was one of England's oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Francis Baring, a British-born member of the German–British Baring family of merchants and bankers. The bank collapsed in 1995 after suffering losses of £827 million (£ billion in ) resulting from fraudulent investments, primarily in futures contracts, conducted by its employee Nick Leeson working at its office in Singapore. History 1762–1889 Barings Bank was founded in 1762 as the John and Francis Baring Company by Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, with his older brother John Baring as a mostly silent partner. They were sons of John (né Johann) Baring, wool trader of Exeter, born in Bremen, Germany. The company started business in offices off Cheapside in London, and within a few years moved to larger quarters in Mincing Lane.D. Kinaston. The City of London, ...
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List Of Trading Losses
The following contains a list of trading losses of the equivalent of US$100 million or higher. Trading losses are the amount of principal losses in an account. Because of the secretive nature of many hedge funds and fund managers, some notable losses may never be reported to the public. The list is ordered by the real amount lost, starting with the greatest. This list includes both fraudulent and non-fraudulent losses, but excludes those associated with Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme (estimated in the $50 billion range) as Madoff did not lose most of this money in trading. See also * Rogue trader * * Derivative (finance) * Silver Thursday * Sumitomo copper affair The Sumitomo copper affair refers to a metal trading scandal in 1996 involving Yasuo Hamanaka, the chief copper trader of the Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corporation (Sumitomo). The scandal involves unauthorized trading over a 10-year period b ... References {{DEFAULTSORT:Trading losses Lists by economic i ...
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Sumitomo Copper Affair
The Sumitomo copper affair refers to a metal trading scandal in 1996 involving Yasuo Hamanaka, the chief copper trader of the Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corporation (Sumitomo). The scandal involves unauthorized trading over a 10-year period by Hamanaka, which led Sumitomo to announce US$1.8 billion in related losses in 1996 when Hamanaka's trading was discovered, and more related losses subsequently. The scandal also involved Hamanaka's attempts to Cornering the market, corner the entire world's copper market through LME Copper futures contracts on the London Metal Exchange, London Metal Exchange (LME). The affair was a major scandal which is at times compared in magnitude to the Silver Thursday scandal, involving the Hunt family's attempt to corner the world's silver markets. It currently ranks in the List of trading losses, top 10 trading losses in financial history. Hamanaka's decade of unauthorized trading Hamanaka and his superior, Saburo Shimizu, began speculating witho ...
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Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American New Keynesian economics, New Keynesian economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was a columnist for ''The New York Times'' from 2000 to 2024. In 2008, Krugman was the sole winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to New Trade Theory, new trade theory and New Economic Geography, new economic geography. The Prize Committee cited Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of Economy of scale, economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services. Krugman was previously a professor of economics at MIT, and, later, at Princeton University which he retired from in June 2015, holding the title of Emeritus, professor emeritus there ever since. He also holds the title o ...
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