It is 5:30am when Matthew Chamberlain wakes up on 8 March 2022. He scrolls through his phone for 20 minutes — nickel prices have surged to more than $100,000 per tonne. It dawns on him that the market is disorderly. This realisation will later lead to London Metal Exchange’s cancelling $12bn in nickel trades that day.
At least, that is what Elliott Management and Jane Street’s lawyers argued at the Royal Courts of Justice in June when they sued the LME for $470m.