Ex-RBS Forex Trader Still Not Sure Why He Was Fired

As pure as the driven snow.

Last time we checked in with Ian Drysdale, he was taking some time to think about what he had done. Well, he’s thought about it—and been fired by RBS, appealed that firing and lost—and he’s still not sure that he did anything wrong vis-à-vis currency manipulation. But he knows who did do something wrong, and it’s RBS. In fact, let’s make it somethingS wrong: First, they're the ones who fucked up, and second, they “dishonestly contrived” to make him a scapegoat by putting him through a kangaroo court designed to find that the kind of (alleged) market manipulation he had done was not OK. RBS’s response—that Drysdale should have been better at reading between its lines—is not exactly an inspiring defense.

Andrew Cross, RBS's director of enterprise-wide risk, who handled Drysdale's internal appeal after he was fired, said the dismissal was justified. "I didn't get any sense that the claimant adapted his behaviour at any point, despite a clear tightening of conduct standards across the industry," Cross said in his witness statement….Cross said there had been a clear change in expectations and standards in the industry in recent years that required staff "to modify their behaviour. "He (Drysdale) was consciously doing things that were the wrong side of the line," Cross said.

Fired RBS trader says he was ‘scapegoat’ for FX fine [Reuters]