An oil trader who got tanked and traded while intoxicated is getting a second shot at a career.
A Swiss commodity brokerage firm has hired Steven Perkins, who is banned from trading for five years by the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority after trading $520 million worth of oil in a drunken blackout.
Starsupply Renewables SA, the world's largest biofuels brokerage, had thought about hiring Perkins for a considerable amount of time and expressed faith in Perkins's rehabilitation.
"We believe Steven Perkins is a good man who did a stupid thing," a spokesperson for the company told the Daily Telegraph.
The 34-year-old broker cornered 69% of the global oil market at around 2:00 a.m. in June of 2009, buying 7 million barrels of oil in a drunken stupor. The trade cost his old company, PVM Oil Futures, $10 million in losses.
Oil prices shot up by more than $1.50 per barrel as a result of the trade - an increase usually only seen after events of geopolitical importance.
Perkins initially said that the orders were authorized by a client, but later admitted that he bought the barrels while blackout drunk following a golf weekend of heavy drinking. FSA officials said that there seemed to be "no motive" for buying the oil.
The FSA announced two days ago that they had suspended Perkins from trading for five years, warning that "Mr. Perkins poses an extreme risk to the market when drunk."
Perkins has reportedly been sober for a year following an alcohol rehabilitation program. Starsupply will honor the FSA's sanctions and keep him away from the trading floor for the remainder of the suspension, tasking him with the creation of training manuals for graduate recruits.
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