Tuesday’s announcement of Hsu’s lifetime ban came almost two years to the day after Hsu was sentenced by the District Court of Hong Kong to 42 months imprisonment, following convictions on 20 counts of theft and 12 counts of “access to computer for dishonest intent”, the SFC noted in a statement.
It also comes around five months after the SFC announced it was fining Merrill Lynch HK$3.5m ($450,000, £290,000) for having “failed to take adequate steps to properly handle the complaints of 11 clients in 2008 before rejecting [them]” – a breach, it noted at the time, of the SFC’s Code of Conduct.
‘Unauthorised transactions’
In its most recent statement, which may be viewed on the SFC website, the regulator noted that during the six months between September 2007 and February 2008, Hsu was found by the court to have “dishonestly effected a number of unauthorised transactions, fund transfers and loan draw-downs in customer accounts that she handled during her employment with Merrill Lynch”.
It added that as a result of her convictions, the SFC now “considers Hsu not a fit and proper person to be licensed”.
It noted that the “seriousness of Hsu’s wrongdoings” that led to her convictions and imprisonment, and “the direct relevance of the wrongdoings to her fitness and properness to be licensed under the Securities and Futures Ordinance” had been taken into account by SFO officials.
