The British daily the Telegraph has a great little markets story on a giant cocoa trade over on the continent. The Telegraph reports:

Anthony Ward, 50, bought 241,000 tons of cocoa beans and now owns enough to manufacture 5.3 billion quarter-pound chocolate bars. Mr Ward, who is worth around 36 million, holds so much of the market he could force manufacturers to raise the price of Britain’s favourite chocolate bars.

The transaction, the largest single cocoa trade in 14 years, was carried out last Friday by Armajaro Holdings, a hedge fund co-founded by Mr Ward. The businessman began his career as a motorcycle dispatch rider before becoming a commodities trader specialising in cocoa and coffee…

The cocoa beans from his latest trade are expected to be kept in warehouses in The Netherlands, Hamburg, London, Liverpool or Humberside and are the equivalent of the entire supply of the commodity in Europe. Cocoa prices rose by 0.7 per cent as a result of the trade to 2,732 per metric tonne the highest price for cocoa in Europe since 1977.

Dow Jones reports that the massive size of the trade has some calling for increased regulation including U.S.-style position limits on commodities. According to NYSE Liffe data released Friday, BNP Paribas and nine other brokers took possession of more than 240,000 metric tons of cocoa, valued at as much as $1 billion.

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