A Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) currency trader was dismissed earlier this year after internal checks uncovered irregularities around how he recorded trades, the bank said.
Andy Donaldson was suspended in June and dismissed shortly after, Sydney-based Adrian Cox, a Deutsche Bank spokesman, confirmed by phone today. Donaldson didn’t immediately respond to voicemails left by Bloomberg News. He caused the bank as much as A$5 million ($4.5 million) in losses, the Australian Financial Review reported earlier today, without saying where it got its information. The sum involved wasn’t material to the bank and didn’t have an external impact, Cox said by e-mail.
The trader’s activities had no connection to any global probes into currency markets, Cox said. Regulators in countries including the U.S. and U.K. are investigating allegations that dealers at some banks leaked confidential client information to counterparts at other firms and colluded to rig currency benchmarks used by money managers. The world’s biggest banks are overhauling how they trade foreign exchange to regain the trust of customers and preempt regulators’ efforts to force changes on the industry.
Deutsche Bank has notified the relevant authorities and is working with them, Cox said. Calls to Donaldson’s mobile phone weren’t answered and he didn’t immediately respond to messages left on his voicemail by Bloomberg. The AFR also reported that he could not be contacted.
To contact the reporter on this story: Candice Zachariahs in Sydney at czachariahs2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Garfield Reynolds at greynolds1@bloomberg.net Nicholas Reynolds