Concealment of Error Trade

As announced on 13 Dec 2017, SFC banned Ms Abbie Yip Ka Ying, a former trader of BNP Paribas, Hong Kong Branch, from re-entering the industry for 18 months for breach of the Code of Conduct over her attempts to conceal a trade execution error.

Yip made multiple attempts to conceal an in-house foreign exchange spot trade execution error made by her on 24 Jun 2015 and the consequential loss of US$58,000 from the erroneous trade, including:

• requesting a trader of BNP Paribas to split the loss over two days so that it would be more difficult for other staff to detect the loss;
• manually re-booking the loss in the wrong portfolio so that it would become less detectable;
• failing to include the loss in the requisite daily reports; and
• failing to report the incident and misleading her supervisor when questioned.

In failing to report the incident to management promptly, Yip failed to comply with the internal guidelines and procedures of BNP Paribas HK on the reporting and escalation of material operational incidents.

In many cases I've seen, error trade was no big deal, but concealment of it would make a big deal.