Kweku Adoboli, the suspected UBS rogue trader said today that he was “sorry beyond words” for the record $2.3 billion losses suffered by Swiss banking giant.
Kweku Adoboli sat in the dock at City of London magistrates’ court as his barrister Patrick Gibbs QC told the court:
“He is sorry beyond words for what has happened here.
“He went to UBS and told them what he had done and he stands now appalled at the scale of the consequences of his disastrous miscalculations.”
Kweku Adoboli, 31, will face a second count of fraud in addition to two charges of false accounting over three years at UBS.
Magistrates remanded Kweku Adoboli in custody until October 20 at the first of two committal hearings.
Prosecutors allege Adoboli lost the cash while working at UBS’s global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds, which track different types of stocks, bonds or commodities such as metals.
Kweku Adoboli’s lawyer, Louise Hodges, of solicitors Kingsley Napley, has made no application so far for bail for her client.
The alleged fraud offence took place between January 1 and September 14 this year.
Kweku Adoboli, son of a former Ghanaian official to the United Nations, joined the Swiss firm in a junior capacity in 2002.
The fraud charge against the rogue trader reads:
“While occupying a position, namely being a senior trader with Global Synthetic Equities, in which you were expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of UBS Bank, you dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain for yourself, causing losses to UBS or to expose UBS to risk of loss.”
The two accusations of false accounting – which date back to 2008 – claim that Kweku Adoboli “falsified a record, namely an exchange traded fund transaction”.
After Kweku Adoboli’s first appearance in court, UBS revised upwards the cost of the rogue trading to 2.3 billion US dollars (£1.5 billion) after previously saying the incident had cost it in the range of two billion US dollars (£1.3 billion).
British Financial Services Authority and its Swiss counterpart have launched an investigation into why UBS failed to spot allegedly fraudulent trading.
