James Lewis, the former CEO of Shard Capital Partners, has been fined £120,300 and banned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The regulatory action follows two separate cases of providing incorrect information about customer cash that Shard purported to hold.
Mr. Lewis’ bad behavior put the market and investors at risk.
Between June 2015 and May 2017, Mr Lewis told auditors that Shard held hundreds of millions in cash for a particular client. In fact, these amounts were debts of another client of the same group.
In addition, between June and July 2021, Mr Lewis provided misleading information to another client, claiming that Shard held significant sums on its behalf. However, this customer’s entire cash balance was previously transferred out of their account.
In any event, Mr Lewis was aware that the information he provided would be used to produce the customers’ annual accounts. As a result, these accounts were incorrect.
While the FCA was investigating the first of these cases, Shard became aware of the second and notified the FCA of the matter in September 2023. Subsequently, Mr Lewis also reported his conduct to the FCA.