Greenlight Capital and JP Morgan Cazenove traders fined £195k

Alexander Ten-Holter, trader and former compliance officer at Greenlight Capital, has been hit with a £130,000 fine by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

The City regulator handed out the penalty after it ruled that Ten-Holter failed to question and make reasonable enquiries before selling Greenlight’s shareholding in Punch Taverns ahead of an anticipated significant equity raising by the pub chain in 2009.

As part of his penalty, the FSA also prohibited Ten-Holter from performing Compliance Oversight and Money Laundering reporting functions.

As part of the same sweep the watchdog also fined Caspar Agnew, a trading desk director at JP Morgan Cazenove.

Agnew was fined £65,000 for failing to identify and act on a suspicious order from Greenlight to sell Punch shares that allowed the firm to be used to facilitate insider dealing or market abuse.

As a result of his failings, JP Morgan Cazenove failed to identify the trade as suspicious and report it to the FSA.