China Aviation Oil Singapore

China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corporation Ltd (CAO) is the largest purchaser of jet fuel in the Asia Pacific region and supplies jet fuel to the civil aviation industry of the People's Republic of China (PRC). CAO supplies to the three key international airport in the PRC, i.e. Beijing Capital International Airport, Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, and accounts for more than 90% of PRC's jet fuel imports. CAO also engages in international trading of jet fuel and other oil products such as fuel oil and gas oil. CAO owns investments in strategic oil-related businesses, which include Shanghai Pudong International Airport Aviation Fuel Supply Company Ltd and China National Aviation Fuel TSN-PEK Pipeline Transportation Corporation Ltd. The company was incorporated on 26 May 1993, and has been listed on the Singapore Exchange since December 2001. 2004 Scandal CAO began trading oil-related derivatives to hedge its purchases of jet fuel against the volatility of the price of oil. However, CAO had not updated its risk management rules to reflect the more aggressive trading strategy, and its control was loose around its traders. This led to traders even exceeding the current limitations set out by CAO. According to CAO, “As the prices of crude oil were at an all time high at above $55 per barrel, the company faced significant margin calls on its open positions and did not have the resources to satisfy the margin calls”. It resulted in US$550 million loss, causing the largest financial scandal to rock Singapore since the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995. SGX appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor to investigate "the circumstances leading to the losses at CAO, the internal controls, risk management and governance practices of CAO, and to report its findings to the Exchange."