Jim Armitage: Porn and bad language – just another day at the bank

Outlook Another day, another London bank in the dock. This time it’s Credit Suisse, and the courtroom is the Wall Street Journal, which details a seedy-looking situation where a trader allegedly breached company rules by sharing information about her clients with her husband at a rival bank.

Adding spice to the allegations is the claim that traders would gather around together and watch sex videos in the office, not to mention the regular use of racist, sexist and sweary language.

As with so many of these events, the supposed wrongdoers have committed their alleged sins – the trading leaks and shocking language – in the electronic messages they type into City chatrooms. That means they are all traceable and, in some cases, open for multiple traders to see.

The big banks, facing ever-higher fines from regulators, repeatedly urge their staff to stop writing such stuff, yet they still do it.

And these are the people whose intellect we trust to trade trillions of dollars of global capital every day.