Morning Coffee: Contrasting fortunes of rogue traders. Cheap sausages at Goldman Sachs
Not a good day for disgraced traders blamed for some of the biggest scandals in recent memory.
Tom Hayes, the former UBS trader currently serving 11 years in prison, has been forced to pay £880k ($1.2m) for manipulating Libor. Originally, the Serious Fraud Office was seeking £2.4m in bonus payments they claimed were only paid because he was rated so highly as a result of manipulating the benchmark rate.
Meanwhile, Navinder Singh Sarao, who is accused of making millions ‘spoofing’ markets and causing the 2010 flash crash, has lost his fight to be extradited to the U.S. for trial. He faces a possible sentence of 380 years in prison.
But while Hayes claims to have wiped out £1m in savings on personal trading losses and legal fees, Sarao is believed to have a fortune of £27m ($40m) stashed away in Swiss bank accounts. and still drives a “broken down green car” and allegedly wore the “same jumper and tracksuit bottoms” when he was trading. Despite Sarao's alleged wealth, he notoriously drives a “broken down green car” and wore “the same jumper and tracksuit bottoms” when he was trading.
Sarao’s legal team said they were “disappointed”, Hayes has penned another impassioned letter protesting his innocence.
“The SFO commented in court that it would expect my wife and I to sell our wedding rings and my wife to sell her engagement ring,” he says, whilst also claiming Libor manipulation had been happening for over 20 years.
Meanwhile, Business Insider has shadowed some technology analysts at Goldman Sachs and gained an insight into its London office. Among other things, there’s an architectural model of the plans for its new UK office, and it’s come to light that it has a well-stocked canteen selling bacon and sausages for less than 50p (80c).
Meanwhile:
Credit Suisse is becoming UBS. This is what investors want to see. (Financial Times)
Credit Suisse will merge its credit and structured finance teams (Reuters)
And…a Credit Suisse private banker who deceived the bank and clients for years is in a prison hospital in Geneva (Bloomberg)
“I told myself that all my clients had to make profits so they would stop annoying me with their criticism about lack of performance” (BloombergView)
Tidiane Thiam has had his bonus cut by 40% (WSJ)
Goldman Sach's head of inflation trading has been put on leave (WSJ)
Hedge fund Lone Pine Capital is launching in London (Reuters)
Wall Street is the one thing holding Blockchain back (Gadfly)
Bill Ackman cancelled conference attendance to focus on “the Valeant situation (WSJ)
Boris Johnson, the London mayor campaigning for a Brexit, says that “senior bankers” secretly think the City would be fine if the UK left the EU (Bloomberg)
Investment banker who defrauded Chicago Bulls star given three years in prison (Chicago Sun-Times)
‘My boss might say, “Tomorrow you’re flying to Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa,” and I’ll immediately think, “I need to do my nails, I need to do my brows, I need to do my hair.” ’(Evening Standard)