Former Deutsche Bank trader wins identity case against FCA

The Decision Notice informed Deutsche Bank that it would receive a financial penalty of £227m as a result of "serious misconduct" through its attempted manipulation of Libor and Euribor.

Christian Bittar argued that market participants who read the notice and were familiar with the Bank’s foreign exchange or money market derivatives operations would conclude that the 'Manager B' outlined in the document was himself.

The FCA is required to give anyone it identifies a copy of the evidence before it is published, and a reasonable period to make representations to the Authority.

Judge Timothy Herrington said that "in our view there is no doubt that when reading the Final Notice the relevant reader would conclude that Manager B was Mr Bittar."

The Decision Notice described 'Manager B' as a person who has "direct line management responsibility" over Derivatives Traders or Submitters, but was was not a "Senior Manager" who had responsibility to oversee a business area. The court ruled that a relevant reader would have known that Mr Bittar did not have those responsibilities.

Additionally, the document revealed that Manager B's focus was on the proprietary trading of EURIBOR linked instruments and made clear that Manager B was both a Derivatives Trader and a Manager of Derivatives Traders.

The Judge also said that the Final Notice makes it clear that Manager B works on the "MMD Desk", and that "consequently, it is inevitable that the relevant reader, knowing that Mr Bittar was a London desk head and that the desk of which he was the head at the relevant time was the Money Market Derivatives desk, would conclude that Manager B could not be anyone other than Mr Bittar."

Mr Bittar still faces a £10 million fine but now has access to evidence from the investigation and the opportunity to contest the allegations against him.