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FSA fines and bans stock broking firm director

Published on 15 Apr 2010 under category: legal

A stock-broking firm and its director have been fined in total £235,000 by the financial services watchdog.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) reported today (April 15th) that Hythe Securities Limited's small cap division exposed customers to considerable risk.

Employees were found to have been hired through an unregulated firm and had insufficient training to provide appropriate advice on high-risk shares.

In addition, the FSA found there were not enough management checks in place to mitigate the dangers of what it described as an "aggressive" sales culture, which saw inexperienced staff penalised for failing to reach sales targets.

Meenaz Mehta, formerly the senior director of the firm, has been fined £35,000 and banned from working in a similar role again.

According to the watchdog, he failed to monitor the activities of his staff to ensure that customers were not being placed at risk.

In addition, his poor record-keeping system meant that he was unable to locate half of the phone call recordings requested by the FSA for its investigation into the firm's activities.

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