Kweku Adoboli a Ghanaian trader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y78zt87L6_Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y78zt87L6_Y&feature=related
City trader Adoboli, 31, has been charged with fraud and two charges of false accounting, one of which dated back to 2008.
During the fifteen minute hearing, the well-built Ghanaian, wearing an open-necked white shirt and sky blue sweatshirt, was handed a tissue from the clerk as he wiped a tear away.
The fraud charge against him read: "While occupying a position, namely being a senior trader with Global Synthetic Equities, in which you were expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of UBS Bank, you dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain for yourself, causing losses to UBS or to expose UBS to risk of loss."
The alleged fraud offence took place between January 1 and September 14 this year, the court heard.
The two accusations of false accounting - that he "falsified a record, namely an exchange traded fund transaction" - occurred between 2008 and 2009 and between January and September this year.
From his roots in the Ghanaian industrial port of Tema to a £1,000-a-week loft apartment in the City of London, Kweku Adoboli was the embodiment of global social mobility as his career went from strength to strength.
From his roots in the Ghanaian industrial port of Tema to a £1,000-a-week loft apartment in the City of London, Kweku Adoboli was the embodiment of global social mobility as his career went from strength to strength.
His journey towards the City began when he was sent to boarding school in England, making such an impression at the £19,635-per-year Ackworth School in Pontefract, West Yorks, that he was made deputy head boy. Former classmates described him as “fun-loving” and “hard-working” and recalled him being a skilful hockey player.
Kathryn Bell, the head teacher at the Quaker school, said he had been “an able student who made a very positive contribution to the school community” before he left in 1998.
From there he went on to study for a BSc in Computing and Business Management at Nottingham University, where in 2000 he was elected as Communications Officer for the Students’ Union, and also took charge of coordinating Freshers’ Week.
“He was an absolute whizz with computers,” said one contemporary. “He was very well-known around the university because he was very sociable, and he told us his father was a diplomat who worked at the United Nations.”
Mr Adoboli’s computing skills earned him a graduate job at UBS, where he started in a back office before being transferred to a trading desk.
“People were a little surprised when he turned up on the trading desk because he didn’t have a trading background,” said one former colleague. Nevertheless, after starting his trading career in 2006, he proved sufficiently adept to be moved on to the Delta One trading desk, coincidentally the type of operation on which Jérôme Kerviel, the Société Générale rogue trader, also worked.
Outwardly, Mr Adoboli seemed to be thriving. Until four months ago, he lived in a 3,000 sq ft open-plan apartment in the City, paying £1,000 per week rent.
Philip Octave, his then landlord, said: “He was a very nice guy. He was very polite. He would speak to anyone. He had a girlfriend who was a nurse, and dressed very smartly. I can’t believe what’s happening. I can’t believe it is him.”
Mr Octave said the apartment, with limestone floors and whitewashed walls, was big enough to make a 10-bedroom flat, and compared it to an art gallery.
He said his former tenant used to talk about his African background and made regular trips back to Ghana to see his parents and extended family.
Mr Adoboli had recently read a book called The Wolf of Wall Street, by former trader Jordan Belfort, who earned tens of millions before being imprisoned for defrauding investors of $200 million in the 1990s.
William Pitt, 39, a neighbour of Mr Adoboli and chief executive of a venture capital fund, said: “I knew he worked for UBS specialising in currencies.
“We had a chat recently about how tough the markets were and he said it was a bloody s--- fight, and we both agreed how tough it was at the moment.
“I would see him a couple of nights a week. He was coming, I was going, and vice versa.”
“We didn’t talk about money, it is an unspoken rule that you don’t speak about figures so I wouldn’t ask him or expect him to tell me, you don’t really unless you are really close or in the same firm.
He said Mr Adoboli had lent him his copy of The Wolf of Wall Street and “he said it was a great read”.
Mr Pitt, who is from Melbourne, said his neighbour would often bring “pretty girls” back to the apartment.
“He had lots of attractive girls coming by. He lived alone. He had friends around all the time. I know a pretty girl when I see one and he had pretty girls over all the time.
“I have heard talk about a girlfriend but I never saw a girlfriend. I didn’t see his girlfriend and he didn’t mention one. No one else lived there.”
“He was a young, successful guy, moving on up, having fun and making me jealous. He was a really relaxed, happy guy.”
Another former neighbour said Mr Adoboli was a party animal who would hold all-night raves. The neighbour said the 31-year-old would host huge parties at the Spitalfields flat about once a month.
He said: “I would complain about his music. I would sometimes scream out in the middle of the night turn down your ------- music. He had the proper set up, he would get DJs for his parties to play house music — they were really extravagant affairs.”
“There would be 50-100 people with some even spilling out on to the street. I remember there was one party which went on right through to 10am the following morning. But he did seem nice, once when I complained about the music he sent me back with a bottle of champagne to apologise.”
In his entry on the social networking website Facebook, Mr Adoboli lists his interests as travelling, mountain biking and football and wrote about his interest in Argentinian wine.
But at some point over the past year, it is alleged, things started to go wrong at Mr Adoboli’s trading desk. It remains unclear by exactly what means he is alleged to have lost £1.3 billion.
One theory is that the bank’s losses were related to the devaluation of the Swiss Franc on Sep 6.
If the bank, or one of its employees, was trading in foreign currency the sudden devaluation could have had a disastrous impact on any trading that relied on a higher valuation.
In recent months Mr Adoboli had been working exceptionally long hours, according to neighbours at the apartment complex in Whitechapel, east London, to which he recently moved.
One resident said: “We never saw him as he was always working at all hours of the night.”
The first sign of trouble came when Mr Adoboli updated his Facebook page to say: “I need a miracle.”
None of his colleagues, however, had an inkling that he was about to be arrested for what is potentially the City’s fraud of the century.
Kathryn Bell, the head teacher at the Quaker school, said he had been “an able student who made a very positive contribution to the school community” before he left in 1998.
From there he went on to study for a BSc in Computing and Business Management at Nottingham University, where in 2000 he was elected as Communications Officer for the Students’ Union, and also took charge of coordinating Freshers’ Week.
“He was an absolute whizz with computers,” said one contemporary. “He was very well-known around the university because he was very sociable, and he told us his father was a diplomat who worked at the United Nations.”
Mr Adoboli’s computing skills earned him a graduate job at UBS, where he started in a back office before being transferred to a trading desk.
“People were a little surprised when he turned up on the trading desk because he didn’t have a trading background,” said one former colleague. Nevertheless, after starting his trading career in 2006, he proved sufficiently adept to be moved on to the Delta One trading desk, coincidentally the type of operation on which Jérôme Kerviel, the Société Générale rogue trader, also worked.
Outwardly, Mr Adoboli seemed to be thriving. Until four months ago, he lived in a 3,000 sq ft open-plan apartment in the City, paying £1,000 per week rent.
Philip Octave, his then landlord, said: “He was a very nice guy. He was very polite. He would speak to anyone. He had a girlfriend who was a nurse, and dressed very smartly. I can’t believe what’s happening. I can’t believe it is him.”
Mr Octave said the apartment, with limestone floors and whitewashed walls, was big enough to make a 10-bedroom flat, and compared it to an art gallery.
He said his former tenant used to talk about his African background and made regular trips back to Ghana to see his parents and extended family.
Mr Adoboli had recently read a book called The Wolf of Wall Street, by former trader Jordan Belfort, who earned tens of millions before being imprisoned for defrauding investors of $200 million in the 1990s.
William Pitt, 39, a neighbour of Mr Adoboli and chief executive of a venture capital fund, said: “I knew he worked for UBS specialising in currencies.
“We had a chat recently about how tough the markets were and he said it was a bloody s--- fight, and we both agreed how tough it was at the moment.
“I would see him a couple of nights a week. He was coming, I was going, and vice versa.”
“We didn’t talk about money, it is an unspoken rule that you don’t speak about figures so I wouldn’t ask him or expect him to tell me, you don’t really unless you are really close or in the same firm.
He said Mr Adoboli had lent him his copy of The Wolf of Wall Street and “he said it was a great read”.
Mr Pitt, who is from Melbourne, said his neighbour would often bring “pretty girls” back to the apartment.
“He had lots of attractive girls coming by. He lived alone. He had friends around all the time. I know a pretty girl when I see one and he had pretty girls over all the time.
“I have heard talk about a girlfriend but I never saw a girlfriend. I didn’t see his girlfriend and he didn’t mention one. No one else lived there.”
“He was a young, successful guy, moving on up, having fun and making me jealous. He was a really relaxed, happy guy.”
Another former neighbour said Mr Adoboli was a party animal who would hold all-night raves. The neighbour said the 31-year-old would host huge parties at the Spitalfields flat about once a month.
He said: “I would complain about his music. I would sometimes scream out in the middle of the night turn down your ------- music. He had the proper set up, he would get DJs for his parties to play house music — they were really extravagant affairs.”
“There would be 50-100 people with some even spilling out on to the street. I remember there was one party which went on right through to 10am the following morning. But he did seem nice, once when I complained about the music he sent me back with a bottle of champagne to apologise.”
In his entry on the social networking website Facebook, Mr Adoboli lists his interests as travelling, mountain biking and football and wrote about his interest in Argentinian wine.
But at some point over the past year, it is alleged, things started to go wrong at Mr Adoboli’s trading desk. It remains unclear by exactly what means he is alleged to have lost £1.3 billion.
One theory is that the bank’s losses were related to the devaluation of the Swiss Franc on Sep 6.
If the bank, or one of its employees, was trading in foreign currency the sudden devaluation could have had a disastrous impact on any trading that relied on a higher valuation.
In recent months Mr Adoboli had been working exceptionally long hours, according to neighbours at the apartment complex in Whitechapel, east London, to which he recently moved.
One resident said: “We never saw him as he was always working at all hours of the night.”
The first sign of trouble came when Mr Adoboli updated his Facebook page to say: “I need a miracle.”
None of his colleagues, however, had an inkling that he was about to be arrested for what is potentially the City’s fraud of the century.
This is not the first story of rogue trading, we already know what Nick Leeson did with Baring bank in 1995. Investment bank's should learn lesson from past and impose proper risk management system. I won't say, it is the fault of trader, but inefficiency of UBS risk management team. They should also be penalized bcz of their failure. It will be in best interest of taxpayers to divide retail banking and investment banking. Taxpayers money should not be wasted to prevent such investment backs whose internal system is the reason of failure. If you do it, you have to bear the consequence, this should be told to investment bankers
Not to worry though...
Central banks are flooding the markets with cash.---
The euro has rallied back to nearly $1.39 on the news.
It would be interesting to know, if anyone can work it out, whether retail banks are priced at a premium over their big brothers. If so, it would be in the interests of the shareholders - as well as the governments - if retail banking arms were spun off from the big banks. And if not, why not? Or am I missing something?
like the statement "some of the services offered by investment banks are useful". Indeed. The problem is that some other of their "services" are not useful at all, but nevertheless sometimes very profitable - not unlike drug dealing for instance.
The City is not too far from Tower Hill. And it should still be possible to find a block of wood and an axe. The problem with investment banks is that the recent financial crisis has shown that there is not much risk in betting the bank. The same applies to the wheeler-dealers who can squander billions with a mouse click. Losing the job after having been able to stash away substantial bonuses in off-shore accounts is not the worst that can happen to someone. On rare occasions, one ends up in prison, as did Bernie Madoff. But only if they were foolish enough to turn a few influential billionaires into millionaires. Legislators should make sure there is a real cost to individuals. Not necessarily lopping off the heads of traitors to the general public. But how about long-term prison sentences in places like Alcatraz. The billion Euros damages awarded against Kerviel are merely symbolic and 3 years in prison are not nearly enough for the likes of him.