SETTLED
Wheat Futures Ploss VS Kraft Foods
FILING DEADLINES:
07/10/2023 ($18,000,000 Lansing Trade Group, LLC, Cascade Commodity Consulting, LLC)
CASE NUMBER:
15-cb-2937 ND of Illinois
CLASS PERIOD:
November 1 - December 31, 2011 & January 1, 2003 - January 31, 2014
TOTAL SETTLEMENT FUND:
$18,000,000.00
SETTLING DEFENDANTS
ELIGIBLE CLASS
All persons who, (a) during the Class Period, purchased and/or sold December 2011 or March CBOT wheat futures contracts and/or options on those contracts and/or (b) between at least January 1, 2003 through January 31, 2014 (“Long Class Period”), purchased and/or sold CBOT wheat futures contracts and/or options on those contracts.
ELIGIBLE INSTRUMENTS
Wheat futures contracts and/or options on those contracts.
Preliminary Allegations
According to the CFTC Complaint, in response to high cash wheat prices in late Summer 2011, Kraft and Mondelēz developed, approved, and executed in early December 2011 a strategy to buy $90 million of December 2011 wheat futures, which amounted to a six-month supply of wheat.
The CFTC Complaint alleges that Kraft and Mondelēz never intended to take delivery of this wheat and instead executed this strategy expecting that the market would react to their enormous long position by lowering cash wheat prices and strengthening the spread between December 2011 wheat and March 2012 wheat futures. Those price shifts did occur and, according to the CFTC Complaint, Kraft and Mondelēz earned over $5.4 million in profits.
Case Summary
The CFTC Complaint also alleges that on five dates in early December 2011, Kraft and Mondelēz held long positions in December 2011 wheat that exceeded the CBOT’s 600-contract speculative spot month position limit by as much as 2,110 contracts without having a valid hedge exemption in place or a bona fide need for that quantity of wheat.
Finally, the CFTC Complaint alleges that beginning in or about 2003 and continuing through January 2014, prior to each of the five annual delivery periods for CBOT wheat, Kraft and Mondelēz conducted off-exchange futures transactions between two separate corporate trading accounts that did not comply with exchange rules for noncompetitive, off-exchange futures trades.
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BRIEF COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kraft and Mondelēz
Country: United States
Industry: Food Service