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Walz escapes fine over Barings collapse but must pay pounds 5,000 costs

Jill Treanor Banking Correspondent
Saturday 11 January 1997 00:02 GMT
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Mary Walz, the former Barings executive, has been reprimanded by the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA) and ordered to pay pounds 5,000 towards the regulator's costs. However, she has escaped a fine and has not been banned from working in the City.

Ms Walz avoided taking her case to a tribunal by agreeing last year to settle one charge brought by the SFA. Publication of the settlement details was delayed while the SFA waited to discover if Ron Baker, her boss at Barings, would appeal a tribunal decision against him.

"Working with the SFA has been arduous and protracted and I'm glad it's finally over," Ms Walz said yesterday. An industrial tribunal refused to grant her the pounds 500,000 bonus she was awarded just hours before Barings collapsed in 1995.

The SFA has banned other Barings executives, including Peter Norris, the former chief executive of the bank, from working in the City. It intends to press on with two remaining tribunals in the Barings affair against Ian Hopkins and James Bax.

However, the SFA has failed to discipline the former chairman, Peter Baring, and his deputy, Andrew Tuckey.

The SFA said Ms Walz accepted that between December 1994 and February 1995 she had failed to act with due skill, care and diligence.

"She did not properly monitor the proprietary trading activity known as the switching business in that she did not appreciate some alerting factors that occurred during this period," the SFA said.

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