London broker banned after drunken trades hiked oil price
The City of London watchdog has handed a five-year ban to a rogue oil broker who
made unauthorised trades that caused a spike in oil prices after a weekend of
heavy drinking.
Stephen Perkins was also hit with a 72,000-pound (110,000-dollar, 90,000-euro)
fine following his actions that cost his company, PVM Oil, more than six million
pounds.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulator handed down the punishments
Tuesday over the incident in June last year in which Perkins drunkenly bought
millions of barrels of oil, which pushed up the price of Brent crude more than
two dollars to an eight-month high.
"Perkins' drunkenness does not excuse his market abuse," said Alexander Justham,
the Financial Services Authority (FSA)'s director of markets.
"Perkins has been banned because he is not a fit and proper person to be
involved in regulated activities and his behaviour posed a risk to the proper
functioning of the market."
The unauthorised trading took place after a drinking binge at a PVM golf
weekend. Perkins continued drinking at the start of the week and the most
serious damage was done in the early hours of Tuesday.
The broker drunkenly purchased a net 7.13 million barrels of oil and the
unusually high trading volume in the typically quiet overnight period sent
prices surging.
He eventually admitted what he had done to PVM, which suspended his trading
access, fired him and sold off the rest of the oil. Perkins claimed that he was
in an alcohol-induced blackout when he made the trades, according to the FSA.
The regulator made no criticism of PVM.
http://news.ph.msn.com/business/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4188321
Help wanted: oil trader. Banned from work in the UK? No problem!
On Tuesday Stephen Perkins was fined £72,000 (US$108,00) by Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) and banned from working in the financial services industry for five years for driving up the price of oil through unauthorized trades while blacked-out drunk. On Wednesday he was in Geneva meeting with the commodity broker Starsupply Renewables SA to talk about joining the firm, reported the UK’s Daily Telegraph. Apparently making illegal trades while drunk and then lying and trying to cover it up is a minor hiccup on the path to a successful career as a commodity trader in Switzerland.
Perkins lost his former employer, PVM Oil Futures, $10 million with his unauthorized trades, and the price of Brent crude oil gained about $1.65 in two hours as a result of his trading. According to the FSA, Perkins “is not a fit and proper person to be involved in regulated activities and his behaviour posed a risk to the proper functioning of the market,” but the British regulator can’t prevent Perkins from trading elsewhere. The agency has informed Swiss regulators of Perkins’s history.
Perkins says he has received treatment for his problem with alcohol and has stopped drinking. The Daily Telegraph interprets his quick recovery from disgrace as proof of “how valuable top brokers are to commodity companies,” which raises a question: If the guy who got drunk and lost his company $10 million is a “top broker,” what are the rest of them like?
http://www.heatingoil.com/home/drunk-oil-trader-banned-uk-lands-job-switzerland701/