Rogue UBS trader who lost £1.4bn says "it could happen again"

Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS banker who lost the Swiss bank £1.4bn through rogue trading, said that it could happen again as banks had not learnt from the financial crisis.

Adoboli, 36, said traders are still pressured to make profits at all costs and the banking industry has not done enough to reform since the 2008 financial crisis.

He told the BBC that behaviour in banking had not changed. "I think the young people I've spoken to, former colleagues I have spoken to, are still struggling with the same issues, the same conflicts, the same pressures to achieve no matter what.

"And this goes back to the structure of the industry. People are required to take risk to generate profit, because yields in the industry are consistently compressed. And if investment banks continue to chase the same level of profitability as they have in the past, the only way to generate those profits is to take more risk.

“But from a politics angle, the desire is to limit that risk taking, to limit the profitability, but you have these conflicted goals. And where the conflict comes is where people fall into this grey zone, and so I think it can absolutely happen again. Especially as we go into what could be the next phase of the great financial crisis over the next 12 to 24 months."

He said the lack of reform is partly due to bosses staying out of jail while junior traders take the blame.

“The industry doesn’t learn … Perhaps there are bad people in the industry. I think it’s about culture. The culture is set at very senior levels of the industry. They have as much responsibility for what the outcomes are as those pushing the buttons.”

Adoboli, the biggest rogue trader in British history, was convicted of fraud in November 2012. He was described by the prosecution as a “master fraudster and “sophisticated liar”, and was released in July 2015 after serving about have of the seven year sentence.

He was born in Ghana and has lived in the UK since he was 12, and is currently fighting deportation, as foreign nationals who have been sentenced to more than four years in prison are automatically considered for deportation. On 20 July he lost his deportation appeal.

Adobali, one of the few bankers to be jailed since the financial crisis, said he was sorry for what happened.

"I unreservedly apologise for what happened - it was a huge failure and part of the redemption is about that. Part of rehabilitation is about facing up to your choices, what was wrong with them, and how do you move forward."