Argus welcomes 'specific application' of Iosco Principles for PRAs

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Jul 17, 2013, 11:48 ET

LONDON, July 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Commodities news and price reporting agency Argus Media welcomes the clarification provided in the Iosco Principles for Financial Benchmarks Final Report that there should be a "specific application" for oil price reporting agencies, namely the Iosco Principles for Oil Price Reporting Agencies (the PRA Principles).

Argus adopted the oil PRA Principles as soon as they were released and is rolling them out to all the markets that it covers.

International securities regulators organisation Iosco — together with the International Energy Forum, International Energy Agency and Opec — is evaluating PRAs' implementation of the PRA Principles. "In order to respect the circumstances under which these two sets of principles have been adopted, as well as the ongoing evaluation process of the PRA Principles, Iosco expects that the oil PRAs should continue to comply with and implement the PRA Principles," Iosco said today.

Argus is rolling out implementation of the PRA Principles for all of its commodity price benchmarks, as envisaged in Iosco's final report on Principles for Oil PRAs published in October 2012, which stated: "Although the PRA principles were developed in the context of PRAs and oil derivatives markets, PRAs are encouraged to implement the principles more generally to any commodity derivatives contract that references a PRA assessed price without regard to the nature of the underlying."

Argus is involved with other leading PRAs in developing a code of best practice for independent price reporting organisations — the IPRO Code — to operate alongside the PRA Principles. Argus has already started working with an audit firm which will conduct an assurance review of Argus' compliance with the PRA Principles for its oil benchmarks later this year.

Argus Media chairman and chief executive Adrian Binks commented: "Argus welcomes the clarification provided in today's report from Iosco. Argus believes that the PRA Principles, applied to commodity price assessments that are used as benchmarks to settle derivative contracts, complement the IPRO Code of best practice for price reporting agencies. Together, the Iosco PRA Principles and IPRO Code provide a robust and transparent framework for commodity price reporting."

Media contacts:

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Seana Lanigan
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Gabriela Alcocer
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Jim Nicholson
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About Argus Media
Argus is an independent media organisation with nearly 500 full time staff. It is headquartered in London and has offices in each of the world's principal commodity centres. Its main activities comprise publishing market reports containing price assessments, market commentary and news, and business intelligence reports that analyse market and industry trends.

More than half of Argus employees are commodity journalists who specialise in reporting news and price information relating to physical energy and related commodity markets. They operate according to a rigorous Editorial Code of Conduct and an Ethics Policy that align with best journalistic practice, including the avoidance of conflicts of interest.

Argus is a leading provider of data on prices and fundamentals, news, analysis, consultancy services and conferences for the global crude, oil products, natural gas, electricity, coal, emissions, bioenergy, fertilizer, petrochemical, metals and transportation industries. Data provided by Argus are widely used for indexation of physical trade. Companies, governments and international agencies use Argus information for analysis and planning purposes.

Argus has 19 offices globally, including London, Houston, Washington, New York, Calgary, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Dubai, Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney, Moscow, Astana and other key centres of the commodity industries. Argus was founded in 1970 and is a privately held UK-registered company. Visit: www.argusmedia.com