A former senior equities trader at Legal and General Investment Management has today been sentenced to two years in prison for insider trading at Southwark Crown Court.
Paul Milsom disclosed inside information relating to forthcoming transactions in securities at LGIM between October 2008 and March 2010, during which time he was an FSA approved person at the company.
Along with the jail sentence, a confiscation order was also made for £245,000.
In sentencing, Judge Pegden indicated that he had given Milsom full credit for pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity and extra credit for entering into a plea agreement with the FSA.
Last February, it was reveled that a 44-year old male LGIM trader was arrested as part of the FSA’s largest-ever insider dealing probe.
At the time LGIM said it was “not aware of any consumer detriment” and that it did not think the trading activities would have affected its financial results.
The arrest, which was the ninth as part of the investigation into ‘spread betting’ in the City, came following raids by the FSA and the Serious Organised Crime Agency on one City address and two domestic addresses.
Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement, said: “This case involved serious offending over a number of years, conducted in a sophisticated way using deliberate techniques to avoid detection.
“Milsom was an approved person who was entrusted by his employer with sensitive and valuable information. He betrayed that trust by exploiting the information for his own benefit.
“Those who work within the industry should be the custodians of its reputation. Milsom’s approach could not have been further from that. His personal greed will have cost him his reputation, his career and his liberty.
“Those who think there is easy money to be made from insider dealing should think again.”
