(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are quietly trying to get out of a business few people know they are even in: trading supplies of raw uranium known as yellowcake.
In the last four years, the banks have amassed low-grade stockpiles of the nuclear fuel ingredient larger than those held by Iran, and enough to run China's nuclear plants for a year.
Goldman's uranium business can trace its roots back to an apartheid-era South African trading conglomerate that sold Iran its only known source of foreign yellowcake 35 years ago. To this day, that uranium delivery underpins Iran's disputed enrichment program, which western powers fear is aimed at developing atomic weapons, although Iran denies that.
