Brent up to $61, First Monthly Gain Since July
Brent premium over U.S. crude widens to $12; China's implied oil demand set to grow 3 percent this year. Crude oil futures rebounded on Friday and Brent headed for its first monthly gain since July, helped by strong investor inflows, an improving demand outlook and supply outages. At 1148 GMT, Brent crude futures were up 92 cents at $60.97 a barrel, off an earlier high of $61.75. U.S. crude was up 78 cents at $48.95 a barrel. Both contracts tumbled on Thursday, with U.S. crude falling hardest. Brent is trading at a premium of about $12 to U.S. crude, which remains hamstrung by massive inventory builds. This is the widest spread since January 2014. "The main event this week has been the widening of the spread between Brent and WTI (U.S.
First Electronic Container Freight Swap Settled in USD
Saxo Bank and ICAP Shipping Involved in World's First Electronic Container Freight Swap Settled in USD. Saxo Bank, the trading and investment specialist, and ICAP Shipping, the shipping arm of ICAP plc, announced on Thursday that they were involved in the execution of the world's first electronic, voice-assisted trade of a container freight swap agreement settled in US dollars. The counterparties to the trade were Saxo Bank in Denmark as the buyer and a Netherlands-based trading house as the seller. ICAP Shipping was the broker of the trade. The container freight swap agreement was executed on ICAP's Webtrader platform, with manual input from ICAP Shipping brokers and cleared by LCH.Clearnet. The trade was executed by rugby star Lawrence Dallaglio during ICAP's 19th annual Charity Day.
