nuclear-news

Goldman Sachs geting out of failing uranium industry

Goldman Sachs Selling Uranium Trading Business Thursday February 13, 2014By Vivien Diniz  Uranium Investing News Back in November, SparkSpread, an online energy publication, broke the news that Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) would be putting its uranium trading desk up for sale due to lax prices for the material and stricter regulations relating to the bank’s commodities activities.

At the time, Goldman said it had no intention of exiting the commodities business. Fast forward several months, and it looks like the bank is substantiating the rumor with the sale of its uranium trading business.

As Reuters states, very few people know that Goldman Sachs has been in the business of trading raw uranium, or yellowcake as it is known. But the bank can trace its uranium business back to an apartheid-era South Africa-based trading corporation that sold Iran its only source of foreign yellowcake over 35 years ago.

However, over the course of the last four years, the bank has been collecting low-grade stockpiles of the nuclear fuel through its nuclear trading desk, known as NUFCOR International. The news outlet writes that Goldman’s stockpiles are currently larger than those held by Iran, and big enough to run China’s nuclear plants for about a year. Beyond that, Goldman has a deal to market a large portion of uranium production from AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE:AU), one of South Africa’s largest miners.

Banks pulling out of commodities

Goldman Sachs entered the uranium trading business in 2009, along with Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), the second-largest bank in Europe, when supplies were tight and prices were ready to spike. However, since Fukushima, the uranium price hasn’t returned to its previous highs…..http://resourceinvestingnews.com/66677-goldman-sachs-selling-uranium-trading-business.html

February 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized