UK Bans Convicted Former UBS Trader From Financial Sector

Tom Burroughes

19 October 2015

The former trader who was convicted of fraud almost three years ago, in a saga that also saw the Swiss bank fined £29.7 million ($45.9 million) for systems failings, has now been banned from the financial services sector.

The ban was imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority on Kweku Mawuli Adoboli, whose abuse of his role as a senior trader caused $2.3 billion in losses. He was banned from performing any function in relation to any regulated financial activity.

His conviction in November 2012, and his resulting seven years’ prison sentence, “demonstrate a clear and serious lack of honesty and integrity”, the FCA said in a statement last Friday.

“In reaching its decision, the FCA has considered all the relevant circumstances and the severity of the risk posed by Mr Adoboli to consumers and financial institutions, and to confidence in the market generally,” the regulator said.

UBS was fined by the Financial Services Authority – the predecessor organisation of the FCA – in November 2012 for systems and controls failings that allowed an employee to cause substantial losses as a result of unauthorised trading. Adoboli was convicted of two counts of fraud by abuse of position and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. On 14 September 2011 UBS became aware that unauthorised trading had been carried out between 1 June 2011 and 14 September 2011 on the exchange traded funds desk in the global synthetic equities trading division conducted from the London branch of UBS.

The losses were incurred primarily on exchange traded index future positions. The underlying positions were disguised by the use of late bookings of real trades, booking fictitious trades to internal accounts and the use of fictitious deferred settlement trades.