The Man Who Triggered a $10 Billion Commodity Collapse Finally Speaks

[dealmaker]

By
Javier Blas and Andy Hoffman
August 15, 2018, 1:56 PM PDT

• Ex-Noble Group employee Vagner talks for first time on record
• Confirms he is behind Iceberg reports that helped sink Noble

Photographer: Nicky Loh/Bloomberg

Arnaud Vagner has been a mystery for more than three years.

Noble Group, once one of the world’s biggest commodity trading houses, characterized him as a disgruntled former junior employee behind a series of reports by Iceberg Research, an anonymous group that began attacking its accounting practices in 2015.

Even as the combined value of Noble’s equity and debt plunged by about $10 billion since then, Vagner declined to comment publicly or even confirm he was behind Iceberg. With the company now on the brink of a restructuring, he’s ready to talk.

“I am Arnaud Vagner,” he said in an interview by phone from an undisclosed location in Europe, confirming for the first time his link to Iceberg Research. He’s speaking publicly now because he’s trying to organize a legal challenge to Noble’s restructuring plan. “Bad companies have to die,” he said.

After writing down billions of dollars, including on contract valuations questioned by Iceberg, Noble’s market capitalization stands at $115 million. At its peak in 2011, the company was valued at $11.7 billion. Noble defaulted on its bonds and now faces a do-or-die struggle to keep going with a $3.5 billion debt-for-equity rescue that will hand control to creditors.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-10-billion-commodity-collapse-finally-speaks

 

[zdreg]

“Bad companies have to die,”

tell that to the US government which bailed out the big US banks that were deemed too big to fail. it says a lot about the future of capitalism in the US, none of it good.

 

[JSOP]

“Bad companies have to die,”

Bad companies do not have to die. They just have to remove all the bad people in those companies that made all those bad decisions and put in good people to run them as companies should be run. When companies die, the people who suffer the most are the innocent and helpless employees who give the best times of their lives slaving for them as they would have to scramble and find another slaveowner to slave for with all those mouths waiting to be fed at home. Why should they suffer for the callousness of others? This restructuring is not too bad PROVIDED that it stipulates that there is also a restructuring of the company's leaders so it would give the company a second chance to go back on its feet being run by the good people.

 

[JSOP]

tell that to the US government which bailed out the big US banks that were deemed too big to fail. it says a lot about the future of capitalism in the US, none of it good.

Bail out is not too bad of a move to keep those entities open so people working in there still have a job I mean they didn't do anything wrong so why should they suffer by losing their jobs but what they should've also done is throw all of those top "heads" into jail for their careless investment decisions.