As a punishment for misconduct relating to 84 transactions spread out over seven months, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Authority has banned Mr Lee Kwok Tung Samuel, a former account executive at DBS Vickers, from re-entering the financial sector for 8 months.

Lee was a licensed representative of DBS Vickers (HK) between 2004 and 2016. In 2014 an HNW client opened a securities account at the firm. On 84 occasions in 2015 Lee carried out the transactions in the following manner.

Stage 1: he spoke to his sales assistant (who handled matters relating to the account) in Cantonese on the telephone and provided details of the order to be executed on behalf of the client.
Stage 2: he then made a second call to the assistant, stating in English that he was the client. The sales assistant, thinking that he was the client, told him that she had received the orders from Lee and would  execute them accordingly. She thereupon sent the orders to market.
Stage 3: sometime before the end of the day, Lee rang the sales assistant, again stating in English that he was the client. The assistant, thinking once again that he was the client, told him that his instructions had been carried out, adding that the contract notes would be sent to him by email after the market had closed.

General Principle 1 of the Code of Conduct for people whom the SFC regulates implores everybody to act honestly, fairly and in the best interests of the customers and the integrity of the market. It is this stipulation that Lee broached. The regulator says that he ought to have asked the client to call the sales assistant to confirm the orders or to acknowledge the executed orders. Nobody suffered any loss.

Early last month, by contrast, the SFC banned Mr Tu Bing, a former associate director and client advisor at UBS AG who managed HNW portfolios, from the industry for life because he had been convicted of bribery.

Hong Kong's District Court found Tu guilty of soliciting and accepting illegal commission payments of approximately HK$1.4 million (US$176,778) from a client for profits generated from the client’s trades in Hong Kong stocks.