[ by Melanie Gretchen ]

A Deutsche Bank trader continued his losing streak.  After he was fired for trying to rig interest rates, one of the firm's best paid traders lost €40 million ($53 million) in bonuses.  Unfortunately for him, the bonuses that the German bank typically pays its staff vest over a 3-year period.  

Christian Bittar was dismissed on 12/11 over claims he colluded with a Barclays trader to manipulate rates and boost the value of his trades in 2006 and 2007, which the bank continues to investigate.   In addition, Bittar was also alleged to have had inappropriate communications with colleagues responsible for making the bank’s Euribor submissions.

“Upon discovering that a limited number of employees acted inappropriately, we sanctioned or dismissed those involved and clawed back all of their unvested compensation.  To date we have found no link between the inappropriate conduct of a limited number of employees and the profits generated by these trades." -- Michael Golden, Deutsche Bank spokesman, in a statement.

Before the investigation began, Bittar, who joined Deutsche Bank in 2001, was a proprietary trader specializing in short-term derivatives contracts and was entitled to a percentage of the profit from his trades.  His billion-euro positions on the direction of short-term interest rates with the firm’s own money paid off  in hundreds of millions of euros in profit for the bank.  In 2008, he was named head of money market derivatives trading in 2010 and moved to Singapore.

Nevertheless, time has not been unkind.  Despite the cloud of scandal under which he left, he now works for Bluecrest Capital Management LLP, Europe’s third-largest hedge fund with $30 billion under management.