The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has lost its appeal of a ruling that the London Whale’s boss was too identifiable in the regulator’s report on the scandal.
Achilles Macris, formerly JP Morgan’s London-based international CIO, complained in 2013 that the FCA identified him in its highly critical assessment without providing him a copy of the fine notices or the chance to defend himself.
Finance professionals “would reasonably have been able to identify Mr. Macris from the FCA’s statements.” —Appeals Judge
A tribunal judge agreed last year. The FCA appealed, arguing that it had not identified Macris, who was never explicitly named in the publications.
“The judge was in my judgment clearly right to conclude as he did,” Appeals Judge Elizabeth Gloster wrote in her May 19 decision to uphold the prior ruling. “As a matter of fact,” she continued, the FCA’s notices to JP Morgan “identified Mr. Macris… The reference to ‘CIO London management’ was in context clearly a reference to a particular individual, and not to a body of people.”
Reached by CIO for comment, an FCA spokesperson said, “We are considering the judgment carefully.”
Macris managed the now-infamous trader Javier Martin-Artajo, helping to oversee $6.2 billion in losses from JP Morgan’s synthetic credit portfolio.
The FCA had been investigating Macris “for a considerable period before the notices were issued against the firm,” according to the appeal judgment. Regulators interviewed the former CIO twice in early 2013 “relating to his management actions concerning the synthetic credit portfolio.”
Macris remains under investigation.
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