Black Sheeps of HK Securities Industry

This year there were lots of cases where the account executives had abused client accounts for unauthorized and even illegal trading activities (such as market manipulation and insider dealing).

SFC has just banned Mr Suen Wai Hung, a former representative of Sun Hung Kai Investment Services, from re-entering the industry for three years. Suen conducted personal trading through the accounts of four of his clients without their authorisation.

In particular:

• he short sold derivative warrants through the accounts of three of those clients;
• he lied to his employer when questioned about the trading and the short sales in those accounts;
• his short sales in those accounts caused substantial losses;
• he earned commission from his personal trades in those accounts to which he would not otherwise be entitled; and
• he fabricated lies to persuade those clients to open accounts with him and persuaded them to provide false or misleading information in their account opening forms in order to secure higher trading limits, ultimately for his own benefit.

It is really hard to rescue the image of HK local brokers if there are so many black sheeps without any bottom line of integrity.