Obituary Controversial: Marc Rich is seen together with his then-wife Denise in February 1985. Photo: Reuters Marc Rich, who has died aged 79, was the godfather of global commodity trading - and for many years a fugitive from US justice, until he was granted a pardon in the controversial last act of Bill Clinton's presidency. In the early 1970s, Rich pioneered large-scale speculative buying and selling in the spot market for crude oil - "spot" meaning for immediate, rather than future, delivery. Contacts with the royal family of Iran enabled him to acquire huge quantities of Iranian oil in anticipation of the Opec embargo in 1973, which precipitated a tripling of the barrel price. The...
↧
