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UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2022-000134 UT-2022-000135 UT-2022-000137 - [2025] UKUT 00214 (TCC)
Fecha: 31-Ene-2025
MHI disciplinary process
MHI disciplinary process
MHI then took disciplinary action against each of the Traders which involved further interviews with each of the Traders. These interviews were conducted by HR, not Compliance, and the Tribunal had notes of these meetings.
Mr Sheth was interviewed on 14 October 2016. He explained that the large order was a price discovery process, to test the market.
Mr Urra was interviewed on 18 October 2016. Mr Urra is recorded as saying that the large orders (which he said were not actually large) were placed to give the Desk a better understanding of the market, and that clients could be selling bonds because they had seen news that the Desk had not or the client could be splitting larger flow into smaller clips.
Mr Lopez was interviewed on 18 October 2016. Mr Lopez referred to the MHI Compliance Report, saying that in his specific case his trading is limited to sizes not bigger than 200 lots and overall he did not see any remote link to anything in the report. Where there are two orders, the one of 200 lots is a delta positioning trade, whereas the other is linked to a cash trade. The purpose of some of the large orders look to have been price discovery, others could have been delta or basis positioning.
Mr Lopez sent an email to HR the following day. That email contained a summary of his background and trading style, with more details on F174, describing the 200 lots as corresponding to duration trading, with the idea that the market was going back to a particular level and he could take on some delta risk, well within his limits. On F174, he said he “can provide some details to the best of what I can remember”, said he had had a look at market levels, Futures and bond activity and said “the thought process for my orders originates from a previous enquiry where a client sold 14mm of btp 2029 bonds”, which triggered a sell off towards a technical support level in the ten-year Futures.
The outcome of the disciplinary process was recorded in letters from MHI dated 10 November 2016 to each of the Traders:
Mr Urra was given a final written warning on the basis that he had not acted with sufficient due skill care and diligence in his role as manager by failing to take reasonable steps to ensure that the Desk was controlled effectively. This included a finding that there was inadequate monitoring of transactions and business practices. This related to the failure to stop Mr Sheth engaging in the “poor practice” of entering new trades rather than amending orders which “attracted the attention of Eurex and an enquiry from them”.
MHI did not find that any of the allegations against Mr Lopez were well-founded. No disciplinary action was taken against him.
Mr Sheth was given a first written warning on the basis that he had acted without sufficient due skill, care and diligence by engaging in what he now recognised to be a poor practice in terms of failing to amend orders but instead entering new trades and cancelling existing trades.
- Heading
- Introduction and summary
- Decision Notices and Authority’s amended statements of case
- Recklessness
- Traders’ Replies and outline of trading strategies relied upon
- Market Abuse
- Dishonesty
- Role of the Tribunal
- Non-disciplinary references
- Disciplinary references
- Burden and Standard of proof
- Evidence including witnesses who had not been called, information that is no longer available and relevance of delay
- Outline of evidence before the Tribunal
- Pace of Authority’s investigation and particularisation of its case
- Lack of information that would have been available to the Traders during the Relevant Period
- Passage of time, memory and witness evidence
- Potential witnesses who were not called by the Authority
- Authority’s Enforcement Division
- Other traders on the EGB Desk - James Hill and Mehdi Barouti
- Management and Compliance at MHI
- Approach of the Tribunal
- EGBs, market making, BTPs and BTP Futures
- The Traders – roles at MHI and experience
- Mr Urra
- Mr Lopez
- Mr Sheth
- MHI and the EGB Trading Desk
- Risk Management and Limits
- MHI’s EGB Business
- Financial Targets
- Remuneration
- Training
- Monitoring of activity
- Traders’ roles on the EGB Desk and interactions
- Eurex Letter
- Interviews with Compliance
- Investigation by MHI Compliance
- MHI disciplinary process
- Interviews by the Authority
- Traders’ explanations of rationale for the Large Orders
- Information Discovery Strategy – Mr Urra
- Information Discovery Strategy – Mr Sheth
- Anticipatory Hedging Strategy – Mr Lopez
- Trading Activity of the Traders in the Relevant Period
- Illustration of application of Criteria to Trading Activity in Instances
- Mr Urra - F7 at 15.31.06.983 on 7 June 2016
- Mr Lopez - F56 at 17.02.08.899 on 15 June 2016
- Mr Sheth - F55 at 16.55.33.255 on 15 June 2016
- Dates of Instances
- Number and size of Large Orders placed by the Traders in the Instance Pool
- Small Order already trading
- Amendment of price of Large Order after the Small Order filled
- Small orders which overlapped with (and on same side as) Large Orders
- Trading Activity of the Traders outside the Instance Pool
- Non-Instance large orders and Lone Large Orders
- Number of small orders placed
- Trading Activity of other participants in the market
- Market abuse
- Evaluation – Whether Large Orders are likely to impact the market
- Tribunal’s assessment of the Experts
- Mr Kasapis
- Summary of evidence of Mr Creaturo
- Market liquidity
- Liquidity of the cash market
- Comparison of traded volumes of BTP Futures in the Relevant Period with other times and markets
- Other Participant Trade Analysis
- Whether Large Orders may influence other market participants
- Market Trend Analysis
- Bid-Offer Spread Analysis
- Volume skew
- Two very large trades in 2017
- Conclusions on market impact
- Evaluation – Whether traders committed market Abuse
- Criteria used to identify the Instance Pool
- The Trading Strategies – contemporaneous explanations
- During the Relevant Period
- Reactions to the Eurex Letter
- Interviews with Compliance
- MHI Compliance Report
- Disciplinary interviews
- Conclusions
- Mandate
- Information Discovery Strategy – plausibility
- Price discovery
- Splitting of orders by clients
- Likelihood of hedging by other market makers
- Whether placing Large Orders gave information benefit to MHI
- Prospect of a profitable position and risk
- Mandate and the Desk’s aims
- Conclusions on plausibility
- Information Discovery Strategy - operation
- Clients in respect of whom the theory of splitting orders was tested
- RFQ Traded Away
- Times of day
- Lack of documentary record of operation of strategy
- Timing for which Large Orders were live and timing of cancellation
- Placing of new Large Orders shortly after cancellation and switching of sides
- Prospect of a profitable position
- Overlap between the Small Orders and the Large Orders
- Amendment of price of Large Orders
- Reduced use of strategy over the Relevant Period
- Conclusions on the Information Discovery Strategy
- Anticipatory Hedging Strategy – plausibility
- Use of terminology of pre-positioning and anticipatory hedging
- Presentation of evidence by Mr Lopez
- Responsibility for increasing success rate in medium-sized RFQs
- Placing of anticipatory hedges at a beneficial price
- Approach to increasing the hit ratio and winning these RFQs
- 93 RFQs and seeking to win this business
- Directional risk and remaining competitive
- Whether placing of large, uniceberged, orders was less likely to achieve Mr Lopez’s aims
- Anticipatory hedging under the Mandate
- Conclusions on plausibility
- Anticipatory Hedging Strategy – operation by Mr Lopez
- Speculative nature of anticipatory hedge orders
- Timing of placing the Large Orders
- None of the Large Orders traded
- Approach to determination of anticipated buying or selling interest
- Time for which Large Orders were live, amendments to price and cancellation decisions
- Overlap with Small Orders
- Size of the Large Orders
- Conclusions on the Anticipatory Hedging Strategy
- Placing of concurrent Large Orders
- Collaboration
- F30 at 17.39.34.225 and F31 at 17.45.10.137 on 10 June 2016
- F84 at 11.24.53.106 on 20 June 2016
- F174 at 12.58.50.334 on 29 June 2016
- F209 at 10.12.49.319 on 22 July 2016
- Conclusions
- Plausibility of Authority’s case that the Traders conducted an abusive scheme
- Whether the abusive scheme would have worked
- Number and Size of the Small Orders
- Market direction and Small Order already trading
- Pricing of the Small Orders
- Conclusions on facilitation of the trading of the Small Orders
- Abusive scheme would not have benefitted the Traders
- Absence of direct evidence of Traders collaborating to commit market abuse
- Risk of detection
- Authority’s alleged scheme cannot explain all trading activity
- Trading Activity of the Traders in the Relevant Period
- Amendment of price of Large Order in Instance Pool after Small Order filled
- Lone Large Orders
- Lone Large Orders placed by Mr Lopez
- Lone Large Orders placed by Mr Sheth
- Small Orders which overlapped with (and on same side as) Large Orders
- F27 at 10.15.48.236 on 10 June 2016
- F40 at 14.16.34.477 on 13 June 2016
- F48 at 11.01.18.775 on 15 June 2016
- F83 at 11.15.29.662 on 20 June 2016
- F106 at 10.03.19.849 on 22 June 2016
- F181 at 11.14.07.730 on 1 July 2016
- F203 at 12.36.16.793 on 19 July 2016
- F222 at 11.19.50.290 on 27 July 2016
- Overlapping Small Orders that did not overlap with Large Order
- Other Overlapping Small Orders
- Conclusions on the Overlapping Small Orders
- Conclusions on Market Abuse
- Mr Urra
- Mr Sheth
- Mr Lopez
- Prohibition orders
- Penalties
- Step 2: The seriousness of the breach
- Step 3: Mitigating and aggravating factors
- Step 4: Adjustment for deterrence
- Step 5: Settlement discount
- Authority’s determination of the penalties to be imposed
- Assessment of the financial penalty
- Mr Urra
- Step 2
- Step 3
- Step 5
- Mr Lopez
- Mr Sheth
- Step 2
- Step 5
- Directions
- JEANETTE ZAMAN
- The Cash BTP Market “BTP” stands for “ Buoni del Tesoro Poliennali ” (literally multi-year treasury bonds) which are long term bonds issued by the Italian Government. Alongside bonds issued by Spain, Portugal and Greece
- Market making in EGBs is very competitive US legislation known as the “ Volcker Rule ” prohibits banks from engaging in proprietary trading (ie, short-term trading for their own profit) but allows an exception for “market-making-related activ
- RFQs and cash trades
- Hedging and trading BTP futures on EUREX Changes in market interest rates typically affect the price of the bond. In essence, when the market interest rate rises, the price of a bond falls and when the market interest rate falls, the price o
- There are several types of BTP future depending on the notional maturity date of the underlying cash BTP. This case concerns a particular type of BTP future called a “Long-Term Euro-BTP Future” (“ BTP
- MHI and the EGB Desk
- GLOSSARY
- APPENDIX 2 Example data for Trading Instances
- At 15:31:07, Mr Urra placed a sell order of 40 lots as an Iceberg Order, iceberged with a maximum show of 9 lots at a time, at what was the Best Bid (crossing the spread) (the Genuine Order )
- Approximately 11 seconds later (the remaining 22 lots of the Genuine Order still not having traded, and sitting at the Best Offer), at 15:31:18, Mr Urra placed a buy order of 444 lots, 1 tick below th
- Conclusions