The world for sale
The world for sale: money, power and the traders who barter the earth’s resources is a book by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, two journalists from Bloomberg. It’s about the rise of commodity traders in the second half of the twentieth century. It was published last year and it’s damn good!
If you are a shareholder of Glencore, get the book. If you are commodity investor, get the book. If you are curious about how the world works, get the book.
Here are 10 stories you’ll read about:
Traders save Jamaica from ruin
Opportunities in the ‘wild east’ from the collapse of the Soviet Union
Roche, the pharmaceutical giant, was the first outside investor in Glencore
Cargill prints its own bank notes to buy Zimbabwean cotton
Archer Daniels Midland lobbies for the use of ethanol as fuel
Glencore trades secrecy for IPO money to fund its growth ambitions
Vitol’s ghost vessel reappears but without its cargo
Pennsylvanian teachers finance the Kurds’ independence
BNP Paribas gets caught and stops banking Trafigura as a result
The oil trade of 2020
The above is meant to spark your interest but there is a lot more. From the inner workings of the business to the risks and challenges facing the industry, there is a ton of useful information in this book.