The Fed bars former Forex trader from banking industry for his manipulation of benchmarks

The Federal Reserve Board announced yesterday it is prohibiting a former FX trader from participating in the banking industry for his manipulation of FX pricing benchmarks.

Matthew Gardiner, a former FX trader at Barclays PLC and at UBS AG, used electronic chat rooms to coordinate FX trading, facilitate manipulation of FX pricing benchmarks, disclose confidential customer information to traders at other organizations, and engage in other unsafe and unsound practices.

The enforcement action against Gardiner follows the Board’s May 2015 enforcement actions against both Barclays and UBS for unsafe and unsound practices related to their compliance and control failures concerning practices in the FX markets.

Those actions required UBS and Barclays to collectively pay $684 million in penalties for control deficiencies related to FX trading.

On May 20, 2015, UBS entered into a consented cease and desist order with the Board of Governors and paid a civil money penalty of $342 million related to unsafe and unsound practices by its FX traders. However, criminal charges were omitted from the Department of Justice.

To view the Order of Prohibition click here (PDF).

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