Glencore, whose ag unit includes Canada’s top grain handler, Regina-based Viterra, declined to comment.

Bidders include a different Canadian pension fund, state-backed Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co. (SALIC) and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the sources said.

SALIC — which already owns a stake in Canadian grain handler G3 Canada, the former Canadian Wheat Board — and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund were not immediately available to comment.

Last month, CPPIB agreed to buy a 40 per cent stake in the unit for $2.5 billion, placing the equity value of the business at $6.25 billion (all figures US$). Including inventories and debt, the unit is valued at closer to $10 billion.

The 9.9 per cent stake is valued at around $625 million.

Glencore had been aiming to close the deals at the same time in the second half of 2016, the sources said.

“Negotiations are ongoing… people who lost out are still trying to get on board, but Glencore will struggle to get more money for it,” one said.

The London-listed company announced its intention to sell a minority stake in its agricultural unit in September, after shareholder pressure to see it cut debt prompted a slew of measures including asset sales, reducing capital expenditure, suspending dividend payments and raising $2.5 billion of new equity capital.

The group said it aimed to cut net debt to between $17 billion and $18 billion by the end of 2016, down from a peak of $30 billion last year.

One sticking point to the deal is whether the smaller stake holder will have voting rights, as CPPIB does, the sources said.

The agriculture business allows Glencore to trade grains, oilseeds, rice, sugar and cotton.

It generated core earnings of $524 million in 2015 and had gross assets of more than $10 billion.

— Reporting for Reuters by Clara Denina and Sarah McFarlane in London, England.

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The sources said COFCO was in talks to buy the remaining 49 per cent of Singapore-listed Noble’s agribusiness for around $700-$750 million, having already acquired a 51 per cent stake in April 2014 for $1.5 billion (all figures US$).

Noble confirmed in a Singapore Exchange (SGX) announcement that it was in advanced discussions with potential buyers on the sale of its 49 per cent agribusiness stake and other strategic transactions. “No definitive or legally binding documents have yet been signed,” it added.

Earlier Tuesday, Noble declined to comment on the potential COFCO deal. State-run COFCO was not available for immediate comment.

For COFCO, a deal would reinforce its position among the world’s top global agricultural traders, rivalling the “ABCD” quartet of companies — Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.

One source said that the big difference in the values between the first deal and a potential second deal showed COFCO had overpaid for the initial 51 per cent stake, but could now mitigate that by paying a lower price for the remainder.

The expected deal would enable Noble’s chief executive Yusuf Alireza to follow through on his November commitment to raise $500 million, seeking to retain the company’s investment grade credit rating and repair investor confidence after a bruising accounting dispute.

Shares in Asia’s biggest commodity trader have shed around two-thirds of their value since mid-February when blogger Iceberg Research alleged the company was inflating its assets by billions of dollars by not fairly representing the value of its commodity contracts.

Noble rejected the claims and board-appointed consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers found no wrongdoing in a report published in August.

The talks with COFCO may or may not result in a deal, however, two sources said they expected a deal to be announced imminently. One said it could be wrapped up by the end of the year and could include an earn out clause based on sugar prices.

The final value of any deal is also subject to change.

The deal would take COFCO’s investments in international grain trading in the past two years to around $3.5 billion, including its 51 per cent stake in Dutch grain trader Nidera.

COFCO is expected to raise its stake in Nidera by a further 15 per cent in 2016 as part of an earn out clause after Nidera missed targets in its results following the deal.

The investments give COFCO assets in some of the world’s top grain and vegetable oil producing regions, including Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and the Black Sea area, whilst enabling it to bring food supply to China independently of the dominant ABCD operators.

— Anshuman Daga and Sarah McFarlane report for Reuters from Singapore and London respectively. Additional reporting for Reuters by Denny Thomas in Hong Kong and Dominique Patton in Beijing.

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Relations between Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, and Turkey, the largest buyer of Russian wheat, have quickly deteriorated after Turkey shot down a Russian air force jet during an operation in Syria earlier this week.

“Everyone has stopped new sales (to Turkey) until the situation is solved. There is no clarity over the current supplies,” a Moscow-based wheat trader said.

Moscow, in the wake of the incident, has strengthened control over food and agriculture imports from Turkey, which are mainly fruit and vegetables.

Russia, which supplies wheat to Turkey mostly by the Azov Sea, exported 1.4 million tonnes of wheat to Turkey in July-October, out of 10.1 million tonnes of its total shipping of this type of grain for the period.

“Exporters in Russia do not want to give any firm commitments to Turkey under these conditions,” another trader said, adding that any action to stop exports to Turkey would hurt Russia.

“There is no official ban from the Russian side but… buyers in Turkey… have started looking at alternative origins to prepare themselves in case of any ban from Russia,” he added.

Before the political row, some Turkish buyers preferred Russian wheat as it was offered at cheaper prices than wheat from Ukraine, other parts of Europe and the U.S.

Some traders expect Russia to curb wheat exports to Turkey with informal limits — similar to its reaction last December when the rouble collapse caused a jump in wheat exports, triggering a state food safety watchdog to significantly slow the issue of export certificates.

“There will be retaliatory measures,” the third trader said. “The aim is to make supplies to Turkey unattractive for exporters,” he said.

Russia could find new demand for its grains in the Middle East and Africa “if needed,” Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said Thursday. His comment was passed to Reuters by the ministry. He did not say in which circumstances the need could occur.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in a further reaction to the jet downing, on Thursday ordered the Russian government to draw up measures that would include freezing some joint investment projects with Turkey.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sarah McFarlane in London and Polina Devitt in Moscow.

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The 150-year-old company, a top commodities trader, is also closing offices, two of the industry sources said.

The cutbacks at the Minnesota-based company come as global agricultural companies are under pressure from slumping commodity prices, slowing demand in China and weakness in emerging markets where Cargill has significant investments.

Cargill may eliminate as many as 4,000 jobs, which would represent about 2.5 per cent of its employees, one of the industry sources said.

The company is “working on recalibrating their business,” said another industry source, a banker.

A Cargill spokesman initially declined to comment, saying “we typically don’t comment on rumours.” He later added he had not “heard anything along the lines of the layoff numbers you mentioned or office closings.”

Cargill is among the four “ABCD” companies that dominate the flow of agricultural goods around the world, competing against rivals ADM, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus. Recently, the companies have faced new competition from trading houses in Asia.

“It seems like they’re trying to adapt and be a little bit leaner and faster,” one U.S. grain trader who interacts with Cargill said about the company.

CEO David MacLennan, who took the reins two years ago, has already taken steps to change the company. In the last six months, Cargill has sold its U.S. hog business to Brazilian meat packer JBS for $1.45 billion and paid about $1.5 billion to buy Norwegian fish feed maker Ewos (all figures US$).

The company has said it will split the company’s hedge fund arm, Black River Asset Management, into three separate employee-owned firms.

Other agricultural companies are cutting back and looking to consolidate to save money. Last month, Monsanto, the world’s biggest seed company, said it was slashing 2,600 jobs and restructuring operations.

Deere and Co., the largest maker of farm equipment, also has eliminated jobs.

In Canada, Cargill’s Winnipeg-based operations include its AgHorizons Prairie grain handling and marketing network, four port terminals for grain, two major beef packing plants, 10 feed mills, canola crushing and refining operations and a stake in barley processor Prairie Malt.

Last month, Cargill reported a 20 per cent gain in profits for its fiscal first quarter ended Aug. 31, following a loss in the fourth quarter that the company attributed in part to slowing economies in emerging markets.

Cargill’s last substantial restructuring was about 15 years ago and aimed at moving employees into positions built around product lines instead of their geographic locations, said Ken Morrison, who worked for the company for 27 years until 2003.

“Headcount reduction and Cargill just don’t go in the same sentence,” Morrison said.

Separately, Cargill said Friday that two vice-chairmen with a combined 74 years of experience at the company will retire.

— Sarah McFarlane is Reuters’ senior commodities correspondent in London, England. Writing and additional reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek in Chicago. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Selling assets is one prong of a wider strategy by the Swiss-based trader and miner to cut about a third of its $30 billion debts and regain investor trust, after its shares tumbled by about three-quarters this year to record lows in tandem with weak global commodity prices (all figures US$).

Glencore declined to comment while COFCO was not immediately available to comment.

Last month Glencore said it was hoping to raise $2 billion from selling assets including a minority stake in its agriculture assets by early next year. The sources did not say the likely size of the stake being sold or the likely amount it would raise.

UBS analyst Myles Allsop has valued Glencore’s entire agriculture business at between $10 and $12 billion.

Sources said Glencore is creating a separate legal entity for the assets involved, expected to be mostly those inherited from the C$6.1 billion purchase of Canadian grain handler Viterra in 2012, a deal which boosted its grain operations in Canada and Australia in particular.

One source said Glencore was considering selling minority stakes to several parties but no more than 49 per cent of the new entity.

“They (agricultural assets) are a business that Glencore wants to grow, but that requires capital and Glencore doesn’t want to put the capital into it because of the balance sheet… so they say let’s sell part of it,” said a source.

It was not clear which Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund was involved in the talks, but state-backed Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co. (SALIC) has been active in the sector, having entered a joint venture with U.S. grain trader Bunge Ltd to invest in Canadian grain handler CWB in April.

SALIC did not respond to a request for comment.

China’s COFCO has also been expanding its agriculture activities, having invested $2.8 billion in 2014 via joint ventures with Noble Group’s agribusiness and Dutch grain trader Nidera, after taking substantial stakes in the companies.

Two sources said Canadian pension funds and Japanese trading houses were also interested in a stake in Glencore’s agriculture assets.

One banker said Canadian pension fund CPPIB is taking a close look at the opportunity.

CPPIB declined to comment.

Sources said Glencore had appointed banks Citigroup and Credit Suisse to handle the sale.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sarah McFarlane and Clara Denina in London and Euan Rocha in Toronto. Additional reporting by Freya Berry and Dmitry Zhdannikov in London, Henning Gloystein in Singapore, and Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo.

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In a meeting with grain exporters on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said the government was using all informal instruments to restrict grain exports, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Analysts say Russia is keen to avoid formal export curbs which might take time to implement and damage relations with its customers, but that it is stepping up other measures — such as quality controls — that can prevent grain leaving the country.

“At the meeting today, exporters were told that all instructions are given to all parties involved to restrict grain exports and that grain should be going now to the domestic market,” said Andrey Sizov, the head of SovEcon agriculture consultancy.

A Russian grain exporters’ lobby — the National Association of Exporters of Agricultural Products — earlier wrote to the government to complain that the country’s phytosanitary service was only allowing exports to Egypt, Turkey, India and Armenia.

“This is nothing more than a hidden form of state regulation of grains,” the group said in a letter to Dvorkovich. Reuters obtained a copy of the letter.

Dvorkovich did not clarify whether any countries were exempt from the restrictions at the meeting with exporters.

Dvorkovich’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the meeting.

Earlier on Wednesday she said the government’s current task was to increase grain supply on the domestic market. She declined further comment.

The agriculture ministry had said on Tuesday it would avoid such curbs even though exports are at record levels following the rouble’s slide against the dollar.

Russia’s Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Service (VPSS) said on Wednesday it had started to pay “special attention” to the quality of grain sent for export.

It said it was issuing export certificates only when the quality conformed with the rules of importing countries.

Traders have forward contracts for Russian grain until April and say the country can export about 30 million tonnes without eating into its domestic needs, the grain export lobby group said.

The agriculture ministry has also put 2014-15 grain exports at 30 million tonnes. So far Russia has exported 19 million tonnes, including 15 million tonnes of wheat.

Effect on buyers

Turkey and Egypt are the largest buyers of Russian wheat.

The list of usual buyers of Russian wheat include more than 15 other countries.

“It’s a limited effective export ban,” a European trader said. “Vessels which have been loaded are now being told they cannot sail by the phyto authorities.”

Previously, Russia’s December grain exports were expected to be at 2.5 million tonnes to three million tonnes.

Shipments are unable to be transported to countries including Yemen, Georgia and Saudi Arabia, traders said.

“We are working on the consequences for our forward contracts since we won’t be able to apply force majeure,” one said.

Chicago wheat rose on Wednesday on concern over supplies from Russia, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts will be the world’s fourth-largest exporter this year. On Tuesday trade sources said grain export certificates had been restricted for some countries.

Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, said it was confident Russia would honour all its wheat import contracts and that it would continue to include Russian wheat as an origin in its international tenders.

— Reporting for Reuters by Polina Devitt, Sarah McFarlane, Nigel Hunt, Michael Hogan, Maha El Dahan, Jonathan Saul, Sybille de La Hamaide, Valerie Parent and Gus Trompiz.

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With a bumper crop and the rouble close to historic lows, Russia could reasonably be expected to actively supply wheat to key customers such as Egypt and Turkey three months after the start of the new 2014-15 marketing season.

However, wheat from Russia is now too expensive on the country’s main international markets, raising concerns that its Western food ban and a population increase related to events in Ukraine have already started to affect domestic demand.

“High local prices could potentially be related to the introduction of sanctions on the import of European food products, which has supported local meat and food producers,” said a European trader.

Moscow in early August imposed a one-year ban on all meat, fish, dairy, fruit and vegetables from the U.S., the 28 European Union countries, Canada, Australia and Norway.

The ban, worth about US$9 billion, is its strongest response so far to Western trade sanctions over the Kremlin’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

Meat and poultry

“Domestically produced meat and poultry are more in demand, and therefore grain as it’s also used for (animal) feed,” the European trader said.

Domestic demand for grains is rising from pork and poultry producers based in Russia’s central regions, Andrey Sizov, the head of the SovEcon agriculture consultancy said.

Growth in Russia’s population following the annexation of Crimea and the flood of refugees from Ukraine — together accounting for an additional three million people — is also supporting domestic demand for bread products, he added.

SovEcon has forecast 2014-15 domestic grain demand in Russia reaching 71 million tonnes, up from 67 million a year ago due to these factors. Domestic wheat demand is expected to rise by 1.5 million tonnes to 36.5 million tonnes.

Another supportive factor for domestic demand is unusually strong grain supply from Russia in February-June, when the weakening rouble currency was helping exporters, Sizov said.

This led to relatively low carry-over stocks at the start of the latest season on July 1 which in turn supported prices after high exports in July, August and September.

“The local market in Russia is well supported due to short covering of higher priced export contracts,” said Swithun Still, a director of Solaris Commodities S.A.

Large foreign debt payments by Russian companies shut out of overseas capital markets as well as broad risk aversion over Western sanctions have pushed the rouble to new lows almost daily in recent weeks.

However, the weak local currency is not helping exporters as it did previously as farmers are holding onto their wheat after selling 10 million tonnes of wheat during the first three months of the season — half of this year’s exportable surplus, a Moscow-based trader said.

Russia’s costly wheat has missed out in several of the latest tenders from one of its key clients, Egypt.

Russia may come back to its main markets in a month or two when exporters hope domestic wheat prices will pull back to a globally competitive level, a Moscow-based trader said.

The country will have a 2014-15 exportable surplus of 27 million to 30 million tonnes of grain, of which wheat will account for 70 percent, if the crop exceeds 100 million tonnes, Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov told Reuters last week.

It has already harvested 96.1 million tonnes of grain before drying and cleaning, including 57.8 million tonnes of wheat, from 81 percent of the planned area.

Passing market share

Russia is priced out of the world wheat market at a time when harvests are available in the European Union as a quick alternative source of supply, traders said.

“I think we will see Russian business being transferred to Germany, Poland and the eastern EU such as Romania, while France also has large supplies of poorer quality wheat which can be sold in cheaper markets,” a German trader said.

According to another German trader, Russian wheat was sold to new markets in South America and Central America early in the 2014-15 season. “But it now does not look likely that these will be repeated in coming months as current prices are too high,” he added.

Russia’s September grain exports are likely to reach 3.7 million tonnes, down from a record 4.6 million tonnes in August, and exports are expected to slow further in the coming months.

State intervention, the buying of grain on the market to replenish stocks, is also supporting the domestic market, Solaris’ Still said.

Russia’s state grain interventions started on Sept. 30 and are set to be focused initially on Crimea, which the Kremlin annexed from Ukraine in early 2014 and is unable to export most of its crop due to legal issues.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sarah McFarlane in London and Polina Devitt in Moscow. Additional reporting for Reuters by Michael Hogan in Hamburg.

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Growing tensions in East-West relations over Russia’s moves to annex the Black Sea Crimea peninsula have weakened Ukraine’s hryvnia currency and its already fragile economy, leading its banks to cut back on lending.

Grain exports have been maintained in Ukraine, which is forecast to be the world’s second-largest grain exporter in 2013-14 behind the U.S.

But its traders are scrambling to find funding, and their borrowing costs are rising. They could ultimately lose market share to the bigger houses.

“We are doing some financing for some players, but it’s based on strong relationships, and clearly there’s a lot more risk today,” a trader at an international commodities trade house said.

One trader specializing in Ukrainian grains estimated that trade houses were charging seven to 11 per cent per annum for dollar-denominated 30-to-40-day loans, up from five to eight per cent paid to local banks before the crisis.

“We have clients who are not able to pay, so we have to find a solution. We are partly financing our buyers,” the Ukraine trader said.

“But there’s not so many like us who can afford financing.”

It’s not unusual for larger trade houses to selectively provide limited financing to smaller traders, but the reduced availability of bank finance has driven up this activity.

“Traders will lend very much on a case-by-case basis,” a European grain trader said.

“Market share”

Some traders said financing issues could concentrate grain trade in the hands of the strongest trade houses.

“I think the people involved in this business with strong financial resources and good cash flow, they will gain market share over weaker smaller companies who don’t have the credit lines, the trade financing,” said Hans Stoldt, director at trade house Ameropa.

For the current campaign to end-June 2014, around four million tonnes of corn remains to be shipped, which will require export financing.

“I would not be surprised if a number of banks raised their prices (for the cost of financing exports), (and) I would not exclude that we would do that,” said Karel Valken, global head of trade and commodity finance at Rabobank.

But most traders said their focus now is turning to the 2014/2015 season.

Farmers are now planting crops for the coming season and need financing to buy seed and fertilizer. Later in the season, they will need funding for pesticides, fuel and labour for harvesting and for exports.

In the worst case, Ukraine’s coming corn crop could drop by a third to 20 million tonnes as the crisis prompts banks to raise lending costs and reduce their exposure, traders and analysts have said.

— Sarah McFarlane is a Reuters journalist based in London, England.

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In a stark illustration of the desperate state of Egypt’s economy, a former minister from Mursi’s ousted government said Egypt had less than two months’ supply left of imported wheat, revealing a far worse shortage than previously disclosed.

The army’s removal of Egypt’s first freely elected leader last week, after millions took to the streets to protest against him, has left the Arab world’s most populous country polarized by divisions unseen in its modern history.

Violence between supporters of Mursi and soldiers at a military compound this week has deepened the fissures.

Washington has been treading a careful line. U.S. law bars aid to countries where a democratic government is removed in a coup. So far Washington has said it is too early to say whether the Egyptian events meet that description.

Nevertheless, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday Mursi’s government “wasn’t a democratic rule.”

“What I mean is what we’ve been referencing about the 22 million people who have been out there voicing their views and making clear that democracy is not just about simply winning the vote at the ballot box.”

The new U.S. remarks were warmly received by the interim government and swiftly denounced by Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said the comments reflected “understanding and realization about the political developments that Egypt is witnessing in recent days, as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets.”

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad Haddad said the remarks showed American hypocrisy: “There is no way the Egyptian army would have gone through with this coup if it would not have been sanctioned by the U.S.”

Wheat supplies

Two and a half years of political turmoil have left Egypt on the brink of economic collapse, scaring away tourists and investors, shrivelling hard currency reserves and threatening its ability to import food and fuel for its 84 million people.

Speaking to Reuters in a tent at a vigil by thousands of Mursi supporters, the ousted president’s supply minister, Bassem Ouda, revealed that government stocks held just 500,000 tonnes of imported wheat.

Egypt, the world’s biggest buyer, usually imports about 10 million tonnes of wheat a year, half of which is given out by the state in the form of subsidized bread sold for less than one U.S. cent a loaf.

The imported wheat stock figure, previously a closely guarded secret, means Egypt will need to urgently start spending a US$12 billion financial aid lifeline it has been given in the past two days by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, rich Gulf states that welcomed Mursi’s downfall.

Egypt had not bought any imported wheat since February, its longest absence from the market in years, until the eve of Mursi’s downfall when it bought 180,000 tonnes.

State grain buying agency GASC said on Thursday it was unlikely to buy any more soon due to the increase in prices and availability of stocks in Egypt.

“I am confident we have enough stocks and hence it is unlikely we buy from the international market soon, especially with the current increase in prices,” vice chairman Mamdouh Abdel Fattah told Reuters.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report that Egypt risked serious food security problems if insecurity and a shortage of foreign currency hindered imports.

“I think the aim of the Arab countries is to make sure Egypt doesn’t fail with respect to food security and financial commitments with the international banking system, so I would think they will push to get the aid through quickly,” said Kisan Gunjal, economist and food emergency officer at the FAO.

Amid the acrimony, Adli Mansour, the interim president named by the general who removed Mursi, has moved briskly to implement an army “road map” to restore civilian rule.

This week he announced a temporary constitution, plans to amend it and a faster-than-expected schedule for parliamentary elections in about six months.

He also named 76-year-old liberal economist Hazem el-Beblawi as interim prime minister. Beblawi held his first meetings with political leaders on Wednesday and told Reuters that he expected the transitional cabinet to be in place early next week.

Negotiations are difficult, with the authorities trying to attract support from groups that range from secularists to ultra-orthodox Muslims, nearly all of whom expressed deep dissatisfaction with elements of the interim constitution.

— Yasmine Saleh and Sarah McFarlane report for Reuters from Cairo. Additional reporting for Reuters by Alexander Dziadosz, Maggie Fick, Mike Collett-White, Tom Perry, Peter Graff, Ali Saed, Seham el-Oraby and Shadia Nasralla.

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Australia, where grain markets were deregulated in 2008, now ships around two million to 2.5 million tonnes of wheat a year in containers, up from about 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes when the market was controlled by the Australian Wheat Board.

“A lot of it is done by smaller, regionally based, container packers who hopped on a plane and ferreted out new markets,” Geoff Honey, chief executive officer of Grain Trade Australia told Reuters.

“For instance there are Vietnamese flour millers who can’t handle bulk (shipments) but they can handle a few containers,” he said on the sidelines of conference organized by the International Grains Council.

Containers may individually contain about 20 tonnes of wheat compared with about 40,000 to 50,000 tonnes which may be shipped in a bulk cargo.

Honey said most of the container shipments were going to southeast Asian customers including Malaysia and Indonesia while trade to China had also been significant.

“About 400,000 tonnes of sorghum has gone to China in the last six months from southern Queensland and New South Wales for liquor production,” Honey said.

The rising popularity of a liquor in China known as Baijiu, which is made from sorghum, has led to increased shipments of the grain from Australia to China.

Canada has recently followed in Australia’s footsteps and deregulated grain exports and a rise in container traffic is anticipated, albeit less dramatic.

“We probably will see some level of increase in container traffic… That is the beauty of having many players looking at how they can take a product and market it,” Ian White, president and chief executive officer with the Canadian Wheat Board said.

White said, however, the key market for containers in south-east Asia was harder to reach for North American suppliers.

Financing has also played a role in the growth of the trade.

“Customers in Asia are using containers because of the financing scenario,” one industry source said, explaining that buyers preferred to minimise the stocks they carried due to the difficult credit environment.

“Sending in bits and pieces allows them to manage inventory via a steady flow,” the source said. “The downside is administration as it multiplies the paperwork which is a pain for traders.”

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