In a development that has sent shivers down the spines of square-mile suits and spreadsheet jockeys, a Google engineer has been charged with insider trading. The alleged crime: using confidential knowledge of a company’s financial health to line his own pockets before the news hit the wires. A tale as old as time, or at least as old as the 1920s, but now with a Silicon Valley sheen and a London twist.
For the City of London, a bastion of high finance and even higher blood pressure, this is a clarion call. A warning flare. A copycat risk that could see a thousand Zoopla landlords and fintech wunderkinds trading on tips from their uncle’s cousin’s brother who works in compliance.
The charge sheet, a masterpiece of legalese and drama, describes how the engineer allegedly used inside information to execute trades that would make a hedge fund manager blush. But let us not be naive. This is not a lone wolf, a rogue trader with a gambling problem and a taste for premium gin.
This is a symptom. A symptom of a system where information is the ultimate currency, and where the line between knowing and exploiting is thinner than the profit margin on a pound shop biscuit. The City of London, that hallowed ground where the ancient art of usury meets the modern miracle of algorithm, must now look within.
Are there more sinners in its hallowed halls? More engineers, more analysts, more coders with a penchant for playing the market? The answer, my dear readers, is a resounding yes.
For every Googler caught, there are a hundred in London sipping expensive cocktails and whispering sweet nothings into the ears of traders. The charge is a warning, a shot across the bows of the financial establishment. But the establishment is a resilient beast.
It adapts, it evolves, it hires better lawyers. So what is to be done? Perhaps the answer lies not in more regulation, but in better gin.
Or perhaps in a return to a simpler time, when trading was done on the floor, with shouts and hand signals, and insider trading was just called ‘good business sense’. But no, that is the nostalgia of a fool. The world has moved on.
The engineers are in charge, and they are not to be trusted. So here’s to you, Mr Google Engineer. You may have fallen on your sword, but you have also given the City of London a wake-up call.
They will not hear it, of course. They never do. But the charge sheet will be filed, the fines will be paid, and the copycats will be back.
They always come back. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of Beefeater and a copy of the Financial Times. The future is absurd, and I intend to enjoy it.
