Tired trader banned by FSA after mis-marking positions

By Louise Armitstead 1018PM GMT sixteen March 2010

Foreign sell merchant Alexis Stenfors Photo SKY NEWS

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) pronounced that Alexis Stenfors, who worked on the exclusive trade table of Merrill Lynch International Bank (MLIB), had "deliberately" mis-marked his positions by $100m (�65.9m) in sequence to cover up his arching losses. His dishonesty forced MLIB, that is formed in Dublin, to regulate the books by $456m.

The box is the ultimate in a duration of confidant actions by the FSA that has warned of the goal to "get tough" on purported monetary wrongdoing.

FSA charges landowner and mother with insider trade Malcolm Calvert to interest opposite "excessive" prison tenure Ex-Cazenove partner gets twenty-one months for insider trade "Market abuse unacceptably high", says FSA arch Sants BlueCrest merchant fined �35,000 for stealing waste to keep his pursuit The rescue has unsuccessful the time to fess up, reboot and begin again

In new days, the FSA has cumulative a self-assurance for insider trade opposite Malcolm Calvert, a former partner at Cazenove and charged Christian Littlewood, a tip investment banker, and his mother additionally for insider dealing. In second box the FSA has pronounced it wants to subject a 33-year-old Singaporean man, the initial time the regulator has sought extradition for a case.

The FSA pronounced that Mr Stenfors, who worked for the London arm of MLIB, on purpose mis-marked the positions he traded in between mid-January 2009 and mid-February 2009 a time when the total organisation was struggling in violent marketplace conditions.

Margaret Cole, FSA executive of coercion and monetary crime, pronounced "We have criminialized Stenfors since his bungle was deliberate, visit and steady over a one month period.

"He was a comparison and experienced merchant who hold a on all sides of certitude at the firm. He tricked the certitude placed in him and demonstrated that he is not fit and correct to be authorized by the FSA."

Mr Stenfors told the FSA that he had been mentally tired a the time owing to an "enormous workload", a miss of legal holiday and the difficult marketplace conditions. He will not interest the ruling. In a matter he pronounced "I am gay that this review has eventually been staid with a satisfactory result ... Life as a merchant can be a really stressful one, quite in my case, where I found my operative sourroundings really upsetting for a series of reasons. This does not forgive the mistakes that I made, that I bewail deeply. The result of this total part has authorised me to re-evaluate what I have finished with my hold up to this point and stirred me to utterly shift what I am doing."

Since column trade is not a "controlled function" in the UK, the FSA was unable to excellent Mr Stenfors. However, the bank was fined €2.75m (�2.48m) in Oct 2009 by the Irish Financial Regulator.