oh, them bankers

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

UBS Warburg fires four bankers

Jill Treanor
Saturday January 26, 2002
The Guardian

Four investment bankers at UBS Warburg have been sacked for
accessing a competitor's website and copying its research.

The bankers used the website set up by Morgan Stanley to give its
customers access to its analysts' research. While many banks swap
website information, it is understood that the Warburg bankers
entered unauthorised pages on Morgan Stanley's site.

The sites are not the publicly accessible main portals for the
banks but are protected with passwords to allow clients to receive
crucial research on stocks, bonds and currencies as quickly as
possible.

It is understood that the copied research was spotted by a client
of Morgan Stanley shortly after one of its salesmen joined UBS
Warburg.

The salesman is thought to have taken his former colleagues'
passwords with him and given them to his new colleagues at Warburg.

The four bankers who have left UBS Warburg are Derek Braun, a
salesman who joined from Morgan Stanley six months ago, Nick
Tudball, head of sales in the credit fixed-income department, Beate
Muensterman and Ralph Gasser, two research analysts in UBS
Warburg's credit fixed-income department.

The incident is an embarrassment for Warburg, which is thought to
have been conducting an inquiry for some months into the similarity
between its research and that by analysts at Morgan Stanley.

A spokesman for UBS Warburg confirmed last night that four members
of staff had left, although it refused to identify them. "We can
confirm that following an investigation into the conduct of four
employees they have left us with immediate effect. We consider the
matter is now closed," a UBS Warburg spokesman said.

The spokesman also confirmed that the access to Morgan Stanley's
website had been "unauthorised".

Morgan Stanley refused to comment.