This article is not about JRR Tolkien’s famous trilogy of fantasy literature. But it is about a very real ‘Ring’ that, in a practical sense, has ‘bound’ the global industrial metals market together for more than a century.

The global Covid-19 pandemic and government policy responses thereto have catalysed social change on a wide variety of fronts. Even one of the most venerable and famously conservative commodities market institutions — the London Metal Exchange — is now embracing modernisation.