UBS trader Kweku Adoboli 'gambled away' £1.4bn Kweku Adoboli denies charges of false accounting and fraud A City trader "gambled away" £1.4bn ($2.3bn) of his firm's money and caused "chaos and disaster", a jury has heard. Kweku Adoboli, 32, of Whitechapel, east London, exceeded his trading limits at UBS in a bid to get a bigger bonus and boost his ego, the court was told. He denies two charges each of false accounting and fraud between October 2008 and last September. His actions saw the Swiss bank's share price fall 10%, around £2.8bn ($4.5bn), and also threatened their existence. Opening its case, the prosecution said Kweku Adoboli exceeded his trading limits and invented fictitious deals to cover his tracks. Sasha Wass QC said the trader "did all of this by exceeding his trading limits, by inventing fictitious deals to conceal this, and then he lied to his bosses". She added: "This colossal loss arose purely as a result of Mr Adoboli's fraudulent deal making, which amounted, as you will see, to nothing more than gambling." He faked bookings, he created false accounts and conducted himself as a master fraudsterâ Ms Wass said that on 14 September Mr Adoboli left his office saying he had a doctor's appointment. Later that day he emailed his employers admitting his deceit and he was arrested the next day. Mr Adoboli had been working as a senior trader at UBS's global synthetic equities branch, buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks, bonds or commodities such as metals. Ms Wass said Mr Adoboli had been "sucked into the gambler's mindset" and "started throwing good money after bad". The prosecutor said the trading loss was enough to pay a year's salary for nearly 70,000 new nurses, or two Wembley stadiums or six new hospitals. Ms Wass said Mr Adoboli had "fraudulently side-stepped" the bank's rules that banned high risk and unauthorised investments. "Mr Adoboli had ceased to act as a professional investment banker and had begun to approach his work as a naked gambler. He had become what is sometimes referred to as a rogue trader," she said. But the prosecutor said the defendant had gone beyond the behaviour of a "mere rogue trader", faking records over a two and a half year period. 'Out of control' She said: "He faked bookings, he created false accounts and conducted himself as a master fraudster, deliberately and systematically deceiving and defrauding the bank which was employing him." It is claimed that Mr Adoboli made false entries to make it seem as if the money he was gambling had been balanced by money coming into the bank. The prosecutor said the defendant had been trusted by his colleagues who would have had no reason to suspect what he had done, and the bank was the "victim" of his fraud. "The bank ought not to be unduly criticised for trusting him. They respected him and he abused their trust to cheat them for his own eventual gain," she said. Concluding her opening, Ms Wass said Mr Adoboli "was a gamble or two from destroying Switzerland's largest bank for his own benefit". "In effect Mr Adoboli was betting the entire bank on the toss of a coin. He was a greedy banker out of control and out for himself," she said. The trial was adjourned until Monday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19595217
His bosses are supposed to follow up on everything they delegate. Barings went out of business because of one trader after hundreds of years of success . You'd think people would learn from that...
you gottta understand... the whole premise of alot of these traders falling is they are gaming the system to try to bury as much risk as possible.. so they can create their own little synthetic call option... if i were to bury a shit ton of risk to take a hugh binary trade where basically i break the bank in my favor or i break the bank not in my favor.. it would be like a cheap bet on my part... heads i win and the bank wins.. tails the bank loses and i don't have to come to the table with my checkbook... in this case the guy is just straight up a fraud... with the way it talks about him being at the synthetics desk... he was probably basket trading against ETFs in some fashion and it just kept going against him.. synthetically creating an ETF in a fashion to create somewhat of a predictable market neutral position.... buy the underperforms sell the etf... i don't know just speculating..
these fucking banks need like the same kind of people that find check fraud writers... they are old check fraud writers that have given up and went to the good side... you gotta be a criminal to know what a criminal thinks...
Kweku Adoboli.........? what the hell is that. who gave this guy a desk and a flat screen and let him bet the farm. the name alone is a red flag in the HR department. you just know he is going to screw it up.
your racist against racists obviously.. haha either way cause the dude is black and foreign doesn't make him a criminal..
He became a trader in December 2005, was promoted to associate director in March 2008 and then director in March 2010. Moving into trading meant he had the chance to earn million-pound bonuses, Ms Wass said, and his salary rose 'dramatically' as his career progressed. In 2007 he earned £40,000 and a bonus of £55,000, in 2008 he earned £50,000 and a bonus of £15,000. The prosecution claim his gambling started in 2008 when he made a trading loss of 400,000 US dollars, and falsified records to cover it up. Then in 2009 he earned £100,000 with a £95,000 bonus and in 2010 his salary was £110,000 and his bonus was £250,000. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ouch-tried-boost-ego-bonus.html#ixzz26UcMqpzm