Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Mg Refining & Marketing, Inc. (A)

Conroy, Robert M.

Case

Mg Refining & Marketing, Inc. (A)

Conroy, Robert M.

F-1227 | Published July 31, 1998 | 4 pages Case

Collection: Darden School of Business

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This case presents the situation that resulted in the disastrous derivative losses Metallgesellschaft experienced. It presents the basic strategy that MGRM implemented and describes how MGRM decided to hedge the risks. One nice feature about this situation is that the marketing strategy created a risk that needed to be hedged. This provides a good framework to discuss how marketing or production decisions create risks that can be hedged in financial markets. The key is that business decisions create the risks, not financial decisions. In this context, students can assess the risks created by the marketing strategy and then evaluate how effective the hedging strategy was in dealing with those risks.