Morning Coffee: Semi-impoverished ex-Deutsche Bank trader is done with working in finance
If you've spent nine years working as a short term interest rate trader at a leading investment bank, £180k ($248k) may not seem a lot of money. If you're never going to work in banking or finance again, however, you could probably do with it.
Such is the situation in which former Deutsche Bank trader Guillaume Adolph now finds himself. Fined £180k by the UK Financial Conduct Authority yesterday for his part in the LIBOR scandal, Adolph has been banned for life from the banking industry where he worked between 2003 and 2011 (when Deutsche Bank fired him). Know by his fellow conspirators as "Gollum," Adolph stands accused of reckless conduct, "serious breaches" and actions that were lacking in integrity. Bloomberg notes that he sent at least 20 communications that were intended to influence the people making Deutsche Bank’s Swiss franc variant of Libor submissions in order to benefit his trading positions between 2008 and 2010.
Like many of those implicated in the LIBOR scandal, Adolph, however, is impenitent. Bloomberg reports that he sent in an emailed statement blaming the bank for his transgressions. Deutsche Bank, "encouraged the very culture that only now, many years on, has led to FCA sanctions,” he said. After a longish career in finance, Adolph also declared his intention of moving onto a career elsewhere and declared his disillusionment with an industry that fails to provide proper training or to manage conflicts of interest.
Deutsche Bank has been accused of making tiny severance payments to those it's currently letting go. Fired for malpractice, Adolph will have received nothing anyway. Now, seven years after leaving the industry he faces this huge fine: the FCA wanted Adolph to pay-up £50k yesterday and the remaining £150k fine by March 2018. Even so, you could say he's got away lightly: fellow conspirator Tom Hayes has been imprisoned for 11 years.
Meanwhile:
41 year-old ex-Apollo Global Management partner Sachin Khajuria quietly started a firm that uses data and AI to help find and evaluate debt and equity investments. (Bloomberg)
Ed Mallon, a former managing director at BlackRock, joined Pagaya, a small asset manager which he says has the potential to become big. (Business Insider)
Moelis hired Chris Roberts, who was most recently head of ECM execution for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at JPMorgan. (Financial News)
Goldman delivered a "firm message" to its male staff who attend the President's Club dinner, and that was all. (Financial News)
Goldman Sachs is moving commodities sales chief Colleen Foster and part of her team from the securities division into the investment-banking unit. (Bloomberg)
Testing jobs will soon be replaced by AI. (SD Times)
Ex-Brevan Howard trader successfully sues noisy neighbour. (Telegraph)
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