FCA v. Conor Martin Foley (price manipulation, 2020)

Judgment entered

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In September 2020 the FCA published a final notice censuring and prohibiting Conor Martin Foley, former CEO of WorldSpreads, for market abuse: disseminating misleading information about the group's loans and internal hedging, and placing spread-bets in clients' accounts that gave a false impression of demand for its shares. A penalty of £658,900 was decided but replaced by censure because of his financial hardship, so no fine was imposed.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

the Financial Conduct Authority announced this matter on September 7, 2020. The respondents named are Conor Martin Foley (1 individual, 0 entities).

The notice finds misleading admission documents and annual accounts, and spread-bets placed through client accounts, some without the clients' knowledge, that gave a false impression of demand for WorldSpreads Group shares. The £658,900 was the penalty the FCA would have imposed, not a penalty paid. This library tags the matter as price manipulation.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-09-07 FCA final notice

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• FCA final notice

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.