The FCA has provisionally banned three bond traders for market manipulation.

The three, Diego Urra, Jorge Lopez Gonzalez and Poojan Sheth, were engaged in repeated market abuse, the FCA said. 

The FCA has banned Mr Urra, Mr Lopez Gonzalez and Mr Sheth from performing any functions in relation to regulated activity.

The FCA has also imposed fines of £395,000 on Mr Urra and £100,000 each on Mr Lopez Gonzalez and Mr Sheth.  

The traders worked at Mizuho International Plc at the time and have appealed their Decision Notices to the Upper Tribunal where their cases will be heard.

The Tribunal will decided what action, if any, the FCA is allowed to take. The bans and fines may be withdrawn if the appeals are successful. In the meantime, the bans and fines will not be imposed until the appeals are heard by the tribunal, the FCA said.

The FCA said it considered that the traders placed large "misleading" orders for BTP Futures that they did not intend to execute, giving false and misleading signals and a false or misleading impression as to the supply or demand of Italian Government Bond futures (BTP Futures) between 1 June 2016 and 29 July 2016.

At the same time, they placed small orders which they did intend to execute on the opposite side of the order book. 

The FCA said it considered that the individuals repeated this pattern of “deliberate and intentional” market manipulation on a number of occasions and were dishonest.  

The FCA said the fines and the bans reflect the serious nature of the breaches.