The efforts by two US companies to start markets in derivatives on film box office receipts have run into a brick wall, as Congress has effectively banned the idea – along with onion futures, outlawed since 1958.
Lobbyists for the Hollywood film industry persuaded Congress to include a ban on the contracts in the Dodd-Lincoln Substitute Amendment, which is part of The Wall Street Transparency & Accountability Act – the biggest reform of US financial markets since the 1930s.
By so doing, Congress has overruled the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has in the past two weeks approved the first contracts for trading at the exchanges – Media Derivatives, owned by Veriana Ventures,...