Oil futures drunk-trading incident

The oil futures drunk-trading incident was an incident in which Stephen Perkins, an employee of London-based PVM Oil Futures, traded 7 million barrels of oil, worth approximately US$520 million in a two-and-half-hour period in the early morning of 30 June 2009 while drunk. These unauthorised trades caused the price of Brent Crude oil to rise by over $1.50 a barrel within a short period of time, a trend generally associated with major geopolitical events, before dropping rapidly. As a result of the trading, PVM Oil Futures suffered losses of almost $10 million and Perkins was dismissed, later being banned from trading by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).