City sackings soar as FSA cracks down

Sackings and suspensions hit a five-year high in the City last year, as the financial crisis continued to take its toll on employment amid a clampdown on wrongdoing by the regulator.

A total of 1,373 City staff were suspended or dismissed last year, which represents a 76 per cent jump on the year before, as the Financial Services Authority stepped up its campaign against white-collar crime.

"The FSA has increasingly shown that it is cracking down on financial crime and market abuse. Financial services firms are operating under increased scrutiny and as a result employers are imposing industry rules more strictly," said Helen Farr, a partner at Pinsent Masons, the law firm which sourced the figures through a freedom of information request. "FSA enforcement activity has clearly had an impact on firms' willingness to tolerate wrongdoing. Firms now appear much more likely to discipline employees for offences," Ms Farr continued, adding that the case of Kweku Adoboli had helped focus minds in the industry.

Adoboli was sentenced to seven years in jail after a jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty of two charges of fraud after losing £1.4bn of UBS money.

The number of redundancies among City workers rose to 35,495 last year, from 33,435 in 2011, as the eurozone crisis looked set to continue for some time.

Last year's job losses brings the total number of jobs lost because of redundancy and dismissal over the past five years to 177,697.