Adoboli given extra month to respond to 'rogue trading' charges

Ex-UBS trader Adoboli's plea hearing has been adjourned until December

Ex-UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, charged with losing £1.3 billion of the Swiss bank's money through fraud and false accounting, has been granted a four-week adjournment to enter his plea.

Adoboli's plea hearing was initially set for 10am on November 22 at Southwark Crown Court, but the judge ruled that he can enter his plea on December 20, so that his legal advisers "can look at the material they have had, and have not had".

His lawyer had opened proceedings by requesting the extra time so that his team could develop a "better understanding of exactly what it was that preceded the calamitous losses" at UBS.

Adoboli spoke only to confirm his name, and is once again remanded in custody until the hearing.

The case has led to resignations from several executives at the bank. Yassine Bouhara and Francois Gouws, co-heads of UBS Investment Bank's global equities division in which Adoboli was a director, and Niraj Gudka, one of the team's two chief operating officers, resigned in early October. Their departures followed the resignation of UBS's chief executive Oswald Grubel in late September, after he took responsibility for the failures in oversight that allowed the unauthorised trading to occur.

Back in November 2009, UBS's internal control failings were already apparent when the bank's wealth management division was fined £8 million by the UK Financial Services Authority, after four employees were alleged to have been able to circumvent controls and make unauthorised trades with client money.

Sergio Ermotti, Grubel's replacement as chief executive, told investors last week that UBS intends to reinforce its operational risk framework in the wake of the Adoboli case.

"Staff need to live and breathe a culture that safeguards and reinforces our reputation every minute of the day," he said. "We are committed to addressing the causes of the incident and disciplining those ultimately deemed responsible."