Cotton lawsuit hits Louis Dreyfus
COMMODITY trading giant Louis Dreyfus has been sued by a former senior trader at rival Glencore, who alleges that Dreyfus illegally cornered the cotton market last year as prices tumbled from record highs.
The trader, Mark Allen, accused Dreyfus of violating antitrust law by artificially inflating prices of Intercontinental Exchange cotton futures contracts expiring in May 2011 and July 2011.
Other defendants include Dreyfus’s Allenberg Cotton and Term Commodities units, and several individuals including Allenberg’s chief executive, Joseph Nicosia, collectively seen as the biggest cotton traders globally.