The City bars where nobody knows your name – or how much you’ve lost | Business | The Observer

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Kweku Adoboli may have run up a $2bn tab at UBS without anybody noticing. The suspected rogue trader may well have passed largely unnoticed through the City social scene too.

Over in Shoreditch, east London, on Friday night – at the Conran-designed Boundary complex of restaurants and bars which Adoboli loved – mention of the trader’s name prompts the kind of vacant expression that is usually the preserve of an investment banking compliance officer.

“Don’t know him from Adam,” shrugs one member of staff. “Mind you – I might recognise him the next time he comes in.”

So it is left to one trader enjoying an end-of-the-week drink to explain how local “rogues” can hide.

“You can usually cover up rogue trades for about two weeks,” he says. “When the compliance department calls to say that the client you’ve booked the trade for has ‘DK’ed you [City slang for “doesn’t know”], you can say you’ll check your records as there may have been a mix-up. You can then book it under somebody else’s name, but if you can’t square the position before being DK’ed again they [compliance] will be back. You’ve got about a fortnight.”

via The City bars where nobody knows your name – or how much you’ve lost | Business | The Observer.

Strange Random Banks Quote:

“When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.” – Dorothy Parker (American short-story Writer and Poet, 1893-1967)

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