The Financial Services Authority today fined UBS AG £8m for systems and controls failures that enabled four employees to carry out unauthorised transactions involving customer money on at least 39 accounts. The unauthorised activity, which took place between January 2006 and December 2007 at UBS' London-based wealth management business, only came to light when a whistleblower raised concerns internally.
Upon further investigation, it was discovered that UBS employees had taken part in the trading of foreign exchange and precious metals using customer money without authorisation and allocated losses to customers' accounts. An internal UBS investigation estimated that as many as 50 unauthorised transactions a day were taking place at the operation's peak.
The FSA investigation found that UBS had failed to: manage and control the key risks, and the level of risk, created by its international wealth management business model;
implement effective remedial measures in response to
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