Court hears UBS trader hid risk exposure of $12bn
ALLEGED rogue trader Kweku Adoboli exposed Swiss bank UBS to billions of dollars of hidden market risk for weeks on end, peaking at nearly $12bn on 8 August last year, a London court heard yesterday.
Adoboli disguised his true trading position with fictitious hedging trades that made it look as though the apparent risk to the bank that day was only $2.3m, according to evidence heard at Southwark Crown Court.
“This level of risk-taking is completely out of proportion with anything that would have been countenanced,” said Ruwan Weerasekera, chief operating officer of securities at UBS’s investment bank.
Adoboli, 32, was arrested on 15 September, 2011, and is on trial accused of fraud and false accounting that cost the bank $2.3bn. He has pleaded not guilty.
The jury were shown tables of figures and graphs produced by Weerasekera that he said showed Adoboli’s true trading positions alongside the inaccurate figures he had booked in the bank’s systems at the time.
The trial continues.