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Bloomberg
A “superstar” Barclays Plc trader fired amid the foreign-exchange market manipulation scandal lost his unfair dismissal case in London, three weeks after regulators banned him from the U.S. banking industry.
The bank took “appropriate actions in light of” Chris Ashton’s “gross misconduct,” a London employment tribunal judge said in a Sept. 19 ruling. The decision is a rare complete win for banks fighting employment claims in the U.K. capital, a forum that has seen some success for traders who lost their jobs during a string of scandals that cost the industry billions of dollars in fines.
Ashton was a member of “The Cartel” — a now notorious chat room used by senior traders at banks including Barclays, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG to share information and agree on ways to try to move currency benchmarks including the so-called 4 p.m. fix. He is the most high-profile of more than half a dozen traders and sales people who said in lawsuits that they were fired as banks rushed to appease regulators.
During a hearing in July, Barclays officials cited transcripts of chats Ashton participated in that included discussions about “using inside information” to make money, a joke about his best friend’s wife and references to “The Cartel.â€
Whistle-Blower Claims
Ashton, who claimed he was singled out by the bank after he told bosses about potential misconduct in trader chat rooms, was not “an innocent whistle-blower,” the judge said in the 72-page ruling. “He had participated in chats with traders at other banks in which he disclosed information, including detailed information about client orders and stop losses,” that breached confidentiality.
Ashton said that while he was “disappointed†with the ruling, there were factual findings in his favor.
The court “accepted that I made protected disclosures, and acted in good faith when raising my concerns, as I had said all along,” Ashton said in a statement through his lawyers. “I am currently considering my options with my lawyers.”
A Barclays spokesman declined to comment on the ruling. Ashton’s colleagues Mark Clark and Jack Murray, have also sued the bank at the employment tribunal.
The decision was dated about three weeks after Ashton, who was based in London, was banned from the U.S. banking industry by the Federal Reserve.
‘Superstar’
The ruling painted a picture of a Ashton’s fall from grace, from a top employee to a pariah over the span of only a few months. One of Ashton’s managers described the trader as a “superstar” in a 2012 appraisal — only a year before his suspension — of his work on the FX desk.
“Content is a huge part of what we do,” the performance review said. “Whether that’s in chats, on the phone or in person. You have transformed our approach to content and made it a huge advantage to the firm.”
Ashton’s bosses, however, did come in for some criticism, with the court saying they “were not careful” to grasp how he was “building content, or obtaining his profit and loss figures.”
Banks fired dozens of traders in the aftermath of regulatory probes into foreign-exchange markets, which have led to fines of at least $10 billion.
Some traders have won claims of unfair dismissal, but failed to get support for their allegations that they were penalized for reporting improper conduct or were victims of discrimination. That would have allowed them to seek recoveries beyond an approximate 80,000-pound ($103,600) cap.