Did Ozymandias, English poet Percy Shelley’s forlorn king of kings, once work the German forward price curve? Shelley’s observation of “how the mighty have fallen” sums up business in Europe’s biggest power market in a way only a Romantic can fully capture.

German electricity trading boomed up to 2001, for a number of reasons (see box). Incumbents built expensive trading floors up and down the country and staffed them with scores of newcomers to the power business, from former financial brokers