FCA bans insider trader 7 years after conviction

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FCA bans insider trader 7 years after conviction

The Financial Conduct Authority has banned a former equities dealer at Legal & General Investment Management seven years after he was sentenced to prison for insider trading. 

Paul Milsom pleaded guilty in January 2013 to insider dealing following a large-scale probe by the Financial Services Authority and two months later was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to two years imprisonment. 

The former trader was convicted over 28 separate incidents of insider dealing during a 17-month period at Legal and General IM between October 2008 and March 2010.

In a final notice published on its website the FCA confirmed Mr Milsom has now been banned from any regulated activity, warning his conviction demonstrated a "clear and serious lack of honesty and integrity".

In 2013 the court also ordered Mr Milsom to pay £245,657.58, the amount he personally gained from the £400,000 profit made by the insider trading. 

During sentencing Judge Pegden QC branded the insider dealing as a "betrayal…of the principles of confidentiality and trust, principles which are essential to the operations of the commercial world". 

The judge also warned the crime had "inevitably" undermined public confidence in the integrity of the market system. 

The FCA said Mr Milsom had used insider information during his time as an equities dealer at the central dealing desk at Legal & General Investment Management to make an "illicit profit from trades".

The FCA said: "His conviction demonstrates a clear and serious lack of honesty and integrity such that he is not fit and proper to perform regulated activities.

"In reaching this decision, the authority has had regard to all relevant circumstances, including the relevance and materiality of the offence, the severity of the risk posed by Mr Milsom to consumers and financial institutions and to confidence in the market generally."

rachel.mortimer@ft.com 

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