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Bloomberg
Former Barclays Plc trader Christopher Ashton, a member of “The Cartel†chat room where bank traders allegedly manipulated foreign-exchange rates, is being fined $1.2 million by the Federal Reserve and permanently banned from U.S. banking.
Ashton, previously global head of the FX spot business at Barclays in London, was accused of using electronic chat rooms to manipulate currency pricing benchmarks and disclose confidential information about customers to traders at other firms, the Fed said Monday. He’s the second former trader penalized by the agency. In July, the Fed banned former UBS Group AG trader Matthew Gardiner from the banking industry for life.
Both were associated with The Cartel — the name given to a now notorious chat room used by senior traders at banks including Barclays, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS to share information and agree on ways to try to move currency benchmarks including the so-called 4 p.m. fix. Last year, the Fed fined six banks for currency rigging and said the lenders had to cooperate in the investigation against
employees.