Ex-colleagues lament death of "lovely" UBS trader who turned white upon discovery of $2bn loss
It's a fortunate thing that not everyone who occupies a senior job on a trading floor in an investment bank has to go through the kind of stress that Riccardo Honneger experienced.
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Honneger, who joined UBS from Deutsche Bank as global head of synthetic equity in 2011, managed Kweku Adoboli, the rogue trader who lost $2.3bn at the Swiss bank. When Honegger discovered Adoboli's losses in September 2011, Honegger's face reportedly turned white.
Honneger had no idea. Three months earlier, Adoboli reportedly told both Honneger and John DiBacco, an MD on UBS's delta one desk, that he'd doubled his risk limit to $200m one day, but had made a $6m profit. In fact, there was a loss nearly 400 times that high.
Adoboli subsequently spent four years in prison. Honneger, who was 51 at the time, was suspended by UBS as a result of the loss. He spent the past 15 years as an investor and sadly died of cancer earlier this month.
Former colleagues say Honneger was a remarkable man. "Ricardo was a man of great intelligence, dignity, and integrity," says Yassine Bouhara, who worked with Honegger at both UBS and at Deutsche Bank. Others former colleagues praised him for "camaraderie and bonhomie", "warmth and humanity", for being a "lovely guy" and "exceptional human being" and for being an "incredibly kind and inspiring person."
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