Craig Donaldson and David Arden, former CEO and CFO of Metro Bank, have been fined £167,325 and £100,950 respectively for being knowingly concerned in a breach of the listing rules.
The FCA’s Upper Tribunal this week upheld the regulator’s earlier decision.
Metro was hit with a £10m fine in 2022 for breaching the Listing Rules by publishing incorrect information to investors.
As a company listed on the Stock Exchange, Metro provided quarterly financial results to the market, the FCA said. In them, Metro regularly reported on its prudential position, including the risk weighted assets (RWA) on which its regulatory capital requirements are based.
On 24 October 2018, Metro published an unqualified statement of Metro's RWA, and the capital ratios based on it. Metro knew at the time of a material error with the data, but did not inform the market. When amended numbers were published in January 2019, there was a 39% drop in Metro’s share price.
The FCA fined Metro £10,002,300 for breaching the listing rules in December 2022.
Mr Donaldson as CEO and Mr Arden as CFO at Metro at the time of the announcement were aware of the material error and involved in the decision to publish the incorrect information, the FCA said.
Steve Smart, executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “Investors make decisions based on information shared by listed companies. They must be able to trust it's accurate. Mr Arden and Mr Donaldson allowed information they knew to be wrong to be published.”
The two have 14 days to appeal the ruling.
Last November Metro was fined £16m by the FCA for money laundering failings from 2016 to 2020.
The fine was imposed after the bank failed to monitor more than 60 million transactions with a value of more than £61bn, according to the FCA.
It would have been fined £23.8m but agreed to resolve the matters and so qualified for a 30% discount, the regulator said.
Metro Bank has 76 branches in the UK and 2.7m customers and in 2024 announced a round of heavy cost-cutting which saw it axe 1,000 jobs.
It secured a multimillion-pound rescue deal in 2023 and returned to profitability last year.
On Monday shares in the bank leapt 10% on stories that it had been approached by investment firm Pollen Street Capital about a potential takeover.
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