I don’t think anyone would suggest 2014 could be regarded as a vintage one, or even a golden one. Most of the issues that dominated don’t actually appear to have been resolved yet, so, in a way, it was a year of marking time.
We all spent a lot of time again pondering the seemingly insoluble issue of LME warehousing. For a spell, after the original High Court ruling, it looked as though Rusal had won its case (which I personally thought was the correct result), only for the Court of Appeal to overrule the first judgment.
The result of that is that the LME’s tinkering with load in/load out rates will go ahead, and the alternative – rent capping – looks like it has been kicked into the long grass. To me, that suggests the issue will still not achieve resolution; rent capping would not be perfect, but it...
