Niall O’Kelly and Lukhvir Thind, the former chief financial officer and former financial controller of Worldspreads (WSG), respectively, have been fined for market abuse and have been banned from performing any function related to regulated activities.
The FCA has fined WSL’s former chief financial officer, Niall O’Kelly, £11,900 and former financial controller, Lukhvir Thind, £105,000.
In August 2007, the holding company of WSL, WSG, floated on AIM.
O’Kelly was closely involved in drafting and approving the admission documentation for the flotation, which contained materially misleading information and omitted key information that investors would have needed in order to make an informed decision about the company.
The FCA also found that O’Kelly helped manage an undisclosed ‘internal hedging’ strategy at WSL using fake client trading accounts and the unauthorised use of actual client trading accounts, which led him to artificially inflate WSG’s assets on its balance sheet.
In the annual accounts for 2010 and 2011, O’Kelly and Thind knowingly falsified information amounting to inaccuracies of £15.9m.
