Drunk trader banned from industry for five years

The FSA has banned a recovering alcoholic from working in the financial services industry for five years. The rogue trader blew £345m on oil, sitting at his home computer, after days of binge drinking. His actions sent global oil prices rocketing and caused chaos in the market.

The FSA also fined Steven Noel Perkins, 34, a former oil futures broker, £72,000 for market abuse. He will have to pay the fine in monthly instalments. 

The astonishing incident happened after Perkins went on a golf weekend jolly, organised by his employers.

Perkins’ job was to trade orders on an execution only basis in Brent Crude Futures contracts on the ICE Futures Europe exchange for his firm’s clients. 

His employer, PVM Oil Future, did no proprietary trading, but in the early hours of the morning on June 30, 2009, Perkins traded on ICE without any client authorisation. He traded in extremely high volume, in excess of 7,000 lots, representing over 7 million barrels of oil. 

Perkins, who made no money out of his actions,  then lied repeatedly to his employer to try and cover up his unauthorised trading.

He had been drinking excessively in the days building up to the incident, but immediately afterwards, Perkins joined a rehabilitation programme and he has stopped drinking. 

The FSA considers it is possible that Perkins may be rehabilitated over time and may be fit and proper again in the future. The ban has therefore been limited to a minimum term of five years.