FCA v. Paul Axel Walter (price manipulation, 2017)

Settled

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In November 2017 the FCA fined bond trader Paul Walter £60,090 for market abuse on the BrokerTec platform, where on 12 occasions he posted bids or offers that became the best quote, waited for algorithmic traders to follow, traded against them and cancelled his quote. The trading earned about EUR 22,000.

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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Penalty as published

£60.1k

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. This regulator states penalties in GBP. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

the Financial Conduct Authority announced this matter on November 22, 2017. The respondent named is Paul Axel Walter (1 individual, 0 entities).

The notice finds he placed misleading best-bid or best-offer quotes in Dutch State Loans to attract algorithms, then sold or bought through the resulting prices and cancelled his quotes, breaching section 118(5). This library tags the matter as price manipulation and spoofing.

The conduct is recorded against bonds.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques 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.
• Spoofing — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2017-11-22 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.