Analyst Note
| Rajiv Bhatia, CFA |On Oct. 4, Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating potential manipulation for oil and other energy benchmarks published by the Platts division of wide moat rated S&P Global. S&P Platts benchmarks are used for commodity transactions both in physical markets and financial markets. The sources of the Reuters article indicate that the probe is focused on the traders who use Platts rather than on Platts itself. Platts uses a markets on close, or MOC, methodology in which the traders’ inputs are used to determine the published price assessment.