News from the circus:

DBS suspends coverage of Noble Group " &ldquo We have suspended our coverage on Noble given the difficulty in quantifying the impact, if any from the recent downgrade in credit rating by S& P and Moody&rsquo s,&rdquo said analyst Mervin Song.He also expressed reservations about the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of Noble&rsquo s strategic review as well as the risk that financial losses will continue

Behind the Scenes

From several journalistic sources.

Noble has intimidated the medias, the Media then become afraid to publish negative things about Noble-the same way it has bullied banks, analysts credit ratings and others.

Behind the Scenes

Bloomberg New&rsquo s top guy (based in NY) had a meeting with Noble after they complained.
They did the same with the highly respected FT.
And with Platts in London, UK.

The strategy was highly risky and has shown the obvious character flaws of the organization.
It has backfired on them. Some took it very badly.



Noble Group has lost the real war

They have focused on an image campaign rather than the &ldquo bread and butter&rdquo that matters for suppliers, investors and credit agencies.

They have lost nearly $3.5B in FCFs since 2 years and half doing absolutely everything wrong from a financial, human resources & trading point of view.




From Energy Market Price Reporting Source

I had an argument with the head trading desk of Mercuria in London (an ex U.S Marine) because I took in consideration a deal of Noble on North Sea Crude oil. He first set fire to me and questioning the reasons on why I had taken into account a deal with a trader " very suspicious" and non recommendable such Noble... " default is a real possibility" ..

and guess what ? One or two hours later, the same gentleman of Mercuria concluded a deal with Noble in the Window.

" A bit cynical, all those traders aren' t they"

The market has been revealed that Noble owed $58M to its ex-CEO.

Additionally, the compensation liability of some Noble Traders (100-150M$ of phantom shares, cash or a combination of both) poses some issues. but could expire worthless as the company will go under.

The delicate question is how the 2 or 3 traders will monetize their bonus ? told they stayed because had no choice, if quit and could lose.

Window salad Dressing

" They had to cover the Oil liquids aka the cash cow (on what they borrow trade loans), on Dec 31th 2016, the coal and gas PnL is up by about 500M with no reason, simultaneously the MTM on Commodity Contract is up by 500M" .

Negative CFO -900M for Q4 tells a different story than their P\L that we can only tell.