How a 'fat finger' trade defeated Citi's weak controls

Just an ordinary morning and a bit of careless typing rattled markets across Europe and spiralled into a crisis costing Citigroup over £100 million and counting. Yet the firm had received repeated regulatory and internal warnings about flaws in their trading controls, reports Denis O'Connor.

Denis O'Connoris a fellow of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment. He was a member of the British Bankers' Association Money Laundering Committee from 2003-10 and a member of the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group's board and editorial panel between 2010 and 2016. He has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences on financial crime issues, both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

The United Kingdom regulators, the Financial Conduct Authority [1] together with the Prudential Regulatory Authority, [2] fined Citibank Global Markets Ltd (Citi) £62 million for failings in the firm's systems and controls that led to $1.4 billion of equities being erroneously sold in European markets in 2022 as a result of a 'fat finger' trade.