FCA unlikely to go public with its investigation findings before 2015
The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced the suspension of yet another forex trader and unsurprisingly, it is most likely related to the ongoing 4 pm fix investigation. The FX fixings scandal that has engulfed the forex market in recent months is taking another victim and bringing the total number of suspended traders from this particular bank to three, according to a Reuters report.
Julian Munson and Paul Nash have already become victims of their own success as the worldwide investigation by national regulators has started uncovering a set of wrongdoings ongoing over the past several years. Sources cited in the article named the suspended trader as Ian Drysdale. So far about 20 traders have already been suspended, put on leave or fired by their fellow banks.
According to legal experts opinions cited in a report by FX Week, FCA’s investigation into potential FX rates rigging will not become public before 2015. The process is lengthy as the regulator will want to thoroughly analyze vast amounts of data and present substantial evidence to have a solid case on its hands before shooting and going public with this one.
FCA’s defense partner Adam Epstein states that the regulator has very wide powers to obtain gargantuan amount of data and documents. It will take a lot of time to carefully investigate all information collected and to subsequently conduct a set of interviews with people involved in the scandal.
Apparently the investigation has triggered a spree of layoffs/suspensions in major banks as they scramble to rearrange their houses in order. Traders (some of which senior) have already been fired at Deutsche Bank, Citi, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered.
For the full article by Reuters reporting the latest RBS suspension visit their website, for the story citing the FCA going public go to FX Week’s website.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.