COMMODITIES

Police Looking Into Broker’s Death: Police in Vermont are re-examining the death of a broker who warned of irregularities in copper trading at a time when Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. was making huge undeclared losses, London’s Sunday Times reported. The British newspaper said Paul Scully, a copper broker at the U.S. company DLT, died in a fire at his home in Vermont on July 3, 1991. Scully, who oversaw the London operations of DLT, had sent three warnings to his superiors about Sumitomo dealings in the months before his death. The newspaper said police were now considering the possibility the case should be reopened as a murder inquiry. Sumitomo has acknowledged losses of $1.8 billion in unauthorized copper trading by its former top trader Yasuo Hamanaka, who has been fired. The Sumitomo debacle triggered a sharp fall in world copper prices.