Activities 9C
Student B instructions
Step 1 In pairs. Skim read the case study and identify the topic of each paragraph. Agree a heading for each paragraph with your partner.
Step 2 Close read each paragraph, highlighting the main points. Step 3 Use the table on page 192. Add notes to the table using the highlighted text you prepared in Step 2. Step 4 Find words with these meanings in the case study.
a rich with lots of advantages compared to others b extra money for good results paid in addition to a salary
c very big d showing signs of being successful in the future e better than all other traders
Promising trader to rogue trader
Kweku Adoboli, born in Ghana in 1980, had a privileged early life. His father was a UN diplomat, and his career took his family away from Ghana from the age of four. At the age of 12, he was sent to an expensive private school in the UK. He went on to do a degree in E-commerce and Digital Business Studies at the University of Nottingham. After graduating, he joined the UBS’s London investment bank as a trainee. In 2003, he started work as an analyst before becoming a successful junior trader. By 2011, Adoboli was earning a combined salary and bonus of £360,000, more than ten times his 2003 starting salary.
The problems for Adoboli began in 2008 when he started using the bank’s money for unauthorized trades. He entered false information into UBS’s computer system to hide the enormous risks he was taking with the bank’s money. In the summer of 2011, UBS became suspicious of Adoboli and started an internal investigation into his trades. He was finally arrested after he emailed his boss, confessing to making illegal trades. In 2012, at the age of 32, he was convicted of fraud. His promising career at UBS was over.
Newspaper stories at the time said he was motivated by the big bonuses that he needed to maintain his lifestyle. Others suggested he acted recklessly because he wanted to become a star trader.
Adoboli denies this and claims he only did it to make money for the bank. Adoboli has always claimed that senior people in UBS knew about the trades and encouraged him to take risks.
It was a scary time for UBS. Adoboli’s actions resulted in losses of £1.4 billion, and the Swiss bank almost went bankrupt. UBS was also fined £29.7 million for weak controls which had allowed Adoboli to hide his trades for three years. Because of the size of the financial losses, 500 staff indirectly lost their jobs.
Adoboli was sentenced to seven years in prison, but only served three years. On his release in 2015, the UK financial authorities banned him from working in the financial sector. This was devastating news for Adoboli. He is also facing deportation back to Ghana, where he has not lived since he was four years old. While he fights this decision, he and an ex-banking colleague are giving seminars to young financial workers on the risk of reckless trading. You can be sure he is an expert on the subject.
English for the 21st Century • Activities 191
f says it wasn’t true g gave someone the confidence to do something h officially declared they didn’t have enough money to repay their debts
i j
stopped someone from doing something shocking and upsetting
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