Investment firm of former Dublin GAA player fined
A DUBLIN investment firm headed by a former inter-county footballer has been fined €210,000 by the Central Bank.
The Central Bank said that BCP Asset Management, whose chief executive is John Calvert, has also been reprimanded for breaching conduct of business rules.
The watchdog said that it uncovered “significant failures” by the firm in respect of how it categorised its clients under relevant rules.
Those failures meant that the firm failed to properly assess some clients who were willing to make their own investment decisions and to be considered by the firm as “professional”, rather than “retail” clients. Professional clients lose certain protections and investor compensation rights.
“As a result of the firm’s breaches, certain clients were not afforded the level of investor protection appropriate to their status as a retail client,” the Central Bank said.
Mr Calvert – who also used to play for St Vincent’s GAA club in Marino on the northside of Dublin – did not respond to a request for comment.
The Central Bank also said that BCP did not take adequate re-mediation steps following an investigation by the watchdog, “necessitating further engagement from the Central Bank before full re-mediation was completed”.
Financial regulations stipulate that to be considered a professional client, an individual must satisfy two of three conditions.
They are that the client has undertaken a specific average number of significant financial transactions in the previous year; that the size of the client’s financial portfolio is more than €500,000; and that the client works, or has worked, in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position which requires knowledge of the transactions or services envisaged they will be offered by a firm.
The Central Bank said that in November 2014, it conducted an on-site inspection at BCP to determine how the firm had assessed clients who had elected to be treated as professional clients.
The Central Bank said that BCP has now rectified the breaches of regulations.