Traders Flee Nasdaq Power Market for Better Deals With Banks
- Nasdaq’s Nordic market trading drops 25% to lowest in decade
- Rising cost of EU rules, new contracts fuel switch by users
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Since the 1990s, Norwegian metals refiner Elkem AS routinely tapped the world’s oldest power exchange in search of the best deals on the electricity supplies it needed to run five plants that make materials for everything from iPhones to body armor to solar panels. Not anymore.
Elkem, Norway’s third-largest electricity buyer, has joined a growing list of energy players to quit the Nasdaq Inc. exchange that offers power contracts in the Nordic region and Germany. Trading on the Oslo-based market plunged 25 percent in the first half of 2017 to the lowest in at least a decade. Companies now buy directly from power plants or brokers and banks.