The ‘London Whale’ boss at JP Morgan fined £792,900 by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) yesterday has slammed the regulator for its ‘unlawful’ actions and vowed to fight the decision in the Supreme Court.
The FCA imposed the penalty on Achilles Macris, former head of CIO International for JP Morgan Chase Bank, for his part in the fiasco, which resulted in the bank losing £6.2 billion in 2012 due to trader Bruno Iksil’s actions.
Macris oversaw Iksil and was punished for failing to notify the regulator of his concerns about the synthetic credit portfolio he oversaw between March 2012 and April 2012. The FCA also found that Macris, who left the bank in July 2013, failed to meet the ‘standards expected of an approved person’ in carrying out his duties.
However, Macris said the outcome represented a ‘major climbdown’ by the regulator, after it no longer said he deliberately misled the then Financial Services Authority.
He said the accusation in the original notice was ‘utterly wrong’ and he was given no chance to defend himself, tarnishing his 30-year unblemished career record. Macris won an Upper Tribunal claim against the FCA in May 2015, with the court finding that he could be identified by the original notice, even though it did not name him.
Macris went on to say he will take his fight to the Supreme Court in a bid to expunge the ‘unfair and false’ original notice from his record, adding he accepted the fine, wishing to settle in order to ‘not prolong the process’.
The FCA said yesterday that Macris failed to inform the regulators of the full extent of the problem in a call with the regulator again on 10 April 2012.
However, Macris said: ‘The FCA ignores the fact that I initiated the phone call in question to provide the FSA with access to the right JP Morgan staff to answer any of their questions. It also ignores my 30-year financial services industry track record of open and cooperative relationships with regulators.
‘While I maintain that my efforts in this regard were above and beyond any reasonable standard of transparency with regulators, now that the FCA has accepted that I did not deliberately mislead it, I have decided not to prolong what has been a drawn out and burdensome process and have settled with the FCA, on the basis that there is no prohibition on my working in the regulated sector.
‘I remain profoundly concerned about how the FCA, and in particular its enforcement staff, has acted. It made completely unfounded public allegations and assertions, without giving me a fair hearing, which it has now had to withdraw, but which have significantly damaged my reputation and career.’
JP Morgan was fined £570 million in 2013 for its failings and US prosecutors charged London-based former traders for their involvement.
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