A Jury in the US is deliberating what constitutes a lie, as the cases against three Ex- Nomura bond traders draw to a close.
The main charges are about the traders lying to customers about prices of bonds and teaching their subordinates in the firm on how to lie. The key point in the case is that the bond traders paid $85 25/32 for a bond but claimed that they paid a higher amount of $86 1/32. They overstated the amount paid in order to extract an even higher price from the final buyer.
The senior-most trader Ross Shapiro’s lawyer told the jury that the bond market was “riddled with deception”. In his rebuttal and closing argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Liam Brennan told the Jurors, “To say that these are sharp business practices, and everyone engaged in them, is not just an affront to everyone in the securities industry, it’s an affront to everyone in every industry that has ever tried to be an honest dealer.”
