Glencore founder dies in Switzerland

Billionaire Marc Rich, who invented oil trading and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton over tax evasion, racketeering and busting sanctions with Iran, died June 26 in Switzerland aged 78. Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from U.S.



Analysis: European biofuel push proving hard to reverse

European policy-makers are discovering the difficulty of curbing a biofuel industry they weaned five years ago as a low-carbon alternative to crude oil, but which is increasingly at odds with the environment and food production. To halt or reverse a $22-billion European biofuel industry requires a sound justification. The problem with biofuels is that calculation


Canadian dollar flirts with U.S. parity

The Canadian dollar has reached parity with its U.S. counterpart because of the Bank of Canada’s commitment to a tightening bias. Despite struggling economies in the U.S. and the euro zone, the Canadian dollar will likely hover around the parity mark for the remainder of the year, according to one analyst. “The Bank of Canada




Glass is still half full for flush American farmers

Brian Roach scrawled a simple outlook for corn prices in a spiral notebook, with a line diving from the upper left hand corner to the lower right. Sitting in a hotel ballroom at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum last week, the commodity broker predicted increasing supplies and weakening demand would slow