Andrew Osborne is justified to feel hard done by. A single four-word remark in a long phone conversation has cost him a small fortune. The words were “something like 350 sterling”, an amount which bears a curious symmetry to the £350,000 fine which the FSA has just levied on him. Given his long years and senior position, he can probably pay it without having to eat bread and water, but it’s still pretty eye-watering. It also looks like rough justice, as he himself claims.
Osborne was a managing director at Merrill Lynch, the brokers with the unenviable task in 2009 of trying to restore financial stability to the pub chain Punch Taverns, a confection of debt built on a sliver of equity. For months, it had seemed odds-on that Punch would collapse, but the “dash for trash” in the spring that year propelled the share price up from 40p to around 160p, and offered a get-out-of-gaol opportunity. Read more
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