CFTC puts metals warehouses on notice of possible probe

The US commodities market regulator has put Wall Street banks and other big traders on notice for a possible investigation of their metals warehousing businesses following years of complaints about inflated prices. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last week sent a letter to firms ordering them to preserve emails, documents and instant messages from the past three years, two sources who received the letters told Reuters.
The notice amounted to a "warning shot" ahead of what is probably a formal CFTC probe, one of the sources said. If there is an investigation, it would be the first such probe by any regulator into the lucrative and controversial industry, which since 2010 has become dominated by banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co and global merchant traders like Glencore Xstrata Plc and Trafigura AG.