Britain’s HSBC Holdings PLC has dismissed Stuart Scott, its London-based head of currencies trading, in connection with the global investigations that have led to the bank paying substantial fines on both sides of the Atlantic, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
It was really only a matter of time before senior FX executives among the six banks were made accountable for their role in failing to supervise the conduct of the several FX traders which were found to have manipulated FX benchmarks and thus resort to openly boisterous instant messages between each other, which were found to contain boastful comments from bank traders concerning profiting from fixing the rates of currencies.
Mr. Scott was responsible for the EMEA region in his capacity of Head of FX Trading at HSBC, and has been let go by the bank according to a report by the Wall Street Journal today.
Officially, Mr. Scott was asked to leave the firm on December 9, after a seven year tenure at the financial giant’s London operations.
Mr. Scott now faces the challenge of not only establishing his next career move, but also faces allegations from the U.S. Justice Department which is currently investigating whether Mr. Scott leaked confidential client information to a major hedge fund for a transaction that netted the fund, and the bank, large profits at the expense of one of the bank’s clients, a matter which HSBC self-reported.