Nov 22, 2012 at 10:38am

Investment Bankers have been challenged to follow the proper rules of banking to avert the possibility of rogue trading in banks.

The call follows the jailing of UBS trader, Kwaku Adoboli, who was sentenced to a seven year jail term for fraud.

His activities at the ETF desk of the bank caused the bank to lose in excess of about 1.4 billion pounds. Kwaku Adoboli, a former rising Star City trader had stood to run up losses of £7.5 bn for his employer.

The 32-year-old admitted to the bad trades, but denied any wrongdoing. He was convicted on two counts of fraud by abuse of position linked to the £1.4 bn loss, but jurors cleared him of four counts of false accounting between October 2008 and September last year.

After the trial, Adoboli was sentenced to seven years for one count of fraud and four years for the other, to be served concurrently.

In an interview with Citi Business News, Banking Consultant, Nana Otuo Acheampong, said: “Kwaku was a trader just as there are a number of Ghanaians working in the city of London, and he is not the first to have been involved in such a circumstance though this has been described as the biggest financial scandal in UK so far; during the course of the hearing, it came out that a Similar Rogue trader who caused Societe Generale a cost of 4.9 billion Euros’ case was given as a warning to workers of the bank.”

In a statement, UBS said: "We are glad that the criminal proceedings have reached a conclusion and thank the Police and the UK authorities for their professional handling of this case."

Adoboli maintained during the two-month trial that senior managers had been fully aware of his activities and had encouraged him to take risks to make profits for UBS.

“The advise to our compatriots who are there is that, they should follow the rules. If things go wrong, immediately draw the attention of management to it, rather than build up fictitious trades which can only backfire in the end,” Nana Otuo stated.

Adoboli joined UBS as a graduate trainee in 2003 and, at the time of the fraud, was a senior trader on the Exchange Traded Funds desk at UBS, investment banking arm in London.

He was arrested in September 2011 after he confessed his losses in an email to colleagues.


By: Lorrencia Adam/citifmonline.com/Ghana