Rothschilds' strategies in international non‐ferrous metals markets, 1830–1940

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the strategies employed by the Rothschilds up to 1940 to gain control and limit competition in the international non‐ferrous metals markets. It examines how they opted for inelastic demand products of highly concentrated supply which lent themselves to market control (mercury, nickel, lead, and copper and sulphur) by taking administrative monopolies (mercury from the state‐owned Almadén mines in Spain) or by controlling the leading businesses of the respective markets (Le Nickel, Peñarroya, and Rio Tinto). The article also analyses how in some cases the family was able to gain worldwide monopolies, and how in other cases they promoted collusive oligopolies with the competition in any number of forms in their quest to maintain profitability and steer well clear of any competition.

From cartels to futures. The aluminium industry, the London Metal Exchange and European competition policies, 1960s–1980s

“…Even though cartelisation is not excluded in the presence of a produce market such as the LME and is very common to non-ferrous metals, cartels in these industries either failed to impose a 'list price' or had to cope with the LME price, manipulating it. 56 When aluminium was 'invented' at the end of the nineteenth century, the history of this metal and of LME took two parallel ways: aluminium producers, through cartels and other cooperative strategies were able to impose a list price, which firms chose to keep as stable as possible on the long run, while LME for long time disregarded this metal considering it not interesting for a futures trade. 57 Neither the implication in aluminium trade of German metal traders with ramifications into the pre-1914 London terminal markets, nor the direct involvement of a former LME's president -Sir Cecill Budd -in an Anglo-Norwegian company formed in 1906, were sufficient to challenge the producers vision at the very birth of this industry.…”