Alcan's legacy LME hedges to expire at end of 2007

Alcan's legacy LME hedges to expire at end of 2007

Alcan’s hedging programme of forward sales on the London Metal Exchange (LME) is set to run its course this year as the last 200,000t of contracts expire.

'We decided at the end of 05 to terminate what was a programme of selling forward LME and to stay with our natural fixed forward price transactions in our downstream businesses,' the company said.

Such contracts will expire at the end of 2007. The remnant 200,000t are priced at an average of around $1,725-1,750 per tonne, it said.

The hedging programme cost the company 2 cents per share in the first quarter of this year, compared with a 3 cent per share gain in the year-earlier period, it added.