Courtesy of Pam Martens
Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries
Front groups with long-term histories of funding from billionaire Charles Koch and his related entities have taken a keen interest in Congressional hearings into the manipulative trading action in the shares of GameStop, a struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer. The Cato Institute maneuvered a seat for itself at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the matter in February and the Mercatus Center will have a seat at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing.
Shares of GameStop soared from $18.84 on December 31 of last year to an intraday high of $483 on January 28 – an unprecedented run of 2,465 percent in four weeks. The stock price then quickly plunged and is now making a second comeback rally, closing yesterday up 41.21 percent at $194.50. Behind the scenes of this wild trading action has been a decidedly perverse trading model. (See GameStop Hearing Exposes a Sick Business Model Destined to Exacerbate Wealth Inequality in America.)
The Koch groups’ laser-focused interest in the GameStop matter piqued our curiosity. Charles Koch is Chairman and CEO of the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. He and the heirs of his late brother, David, own the bulk of the company. While it has been widely known that a subsidiary of his company, Koch Supply and Trading (KS&T), trades commodities on a global scale, ostensibly to hedge the company’s interests in oil, gas and numerous other commodities, there has been scant media coverage of Koch’s vast trading in the stock market, derivatives and investments in private equity.
Koch runs his stock trading operations much like he runs his nonprofit front groups – in the dark with lots of name changes. We’ve been able, thus far, to track down the following Koch-related trading operations or investment vehicles. (Some may no longer be operational.)
1888 Management LLC
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