In 1992 he joined Morgan Grenfell Asset Management in London, which had been acquired by Deutsche Bank. He earned £300,000 a year managing the £1.2 billion European Growth Fund, and was making illegal gambles with his investors’ money including investing in companies that he himself owned. In early 1996 he gave a lecture at the Royal Albert Hall on some of the secrets of his success, and was named investment manager of the year.
In September 1996, Morgan Grenfell suspended dealings in the fund. Young was fired for gross misconduct. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigated. Five more employees were dismissed, and a compensation system of £180m was set up for 90,000 investors, and Deutsche Bank had to pump £100m into the fund to shore it up. In April 1997 the city regulator imposed a £3 million fine.
A second defendant was spared trial because he had terminal leukaemia; a third had charges thrown out on the directions of the judge; the fourth was found not guilty after a £10m trial, and immediately flew back to his native Norway.
In 2003 the SFO pursued a hearing of the facts, and without Young being present. The jury, 11 to one, found that Young had conspired to steal more than £350,000. The judge ordered further medical reports to decide whether the guardianship by a relative and voluntary treatment were to continue. He then granted an absolute discharge.
- Andrew Clarke & Jill Treanor. “Fraud case fund boss unfit to stand trial: Stress in the City: jury hears of sex change agony of former high-flyer”. The Guardian, 16 Dec 2000. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/dec/16/andrewclark.jilltreanor.
- Simon Bowers. “Final blow for fraud team: £10m legal bill after stockbroker in Peter Young case is cleared”. The Guardian, 25 January 2002. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jan/25/simonbowers.
- Julia Finch. “City high flyer who heard voices urging him to change sex”. The Guardian, 25 Jan 2002. www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jan/25/juliafinch.
- “Peter Young - Hearing of the Facts”. Serious Fraud Office, 13 June 2003. www.sfo.gov.uk/press-room/latest-press-releases/press-releases-2003/peter-young---hearing-of-the-facts.aspx.
- Simon Bowers. “Jury finds that Young orchestrated fraud: Mentally ill former MG fund manager will not be jailed”. The Guardian, 14 June 2003. www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/jun/14/5.
- Vic Daniels. Never Mind Your Bonus: Here Is The City. Harriman House, 2008: 52.
- Philip Augar. Reckless: The Rise and Fall of the City. Vintahe Books, 2010:
- Andrew Beattie. "How Did Rogue Trader Peter Young Become Infamous?". Investopedia. Online.
For some reason the Wikipedia article on Morgan, Grenfell & Co. says nothing at all about the Peter Young scandal.
If you are schizoprenic the gatekeepers won't approve you for surgery. They regard that as co-morbidity. If you google schiziophrenia and transsexual there are a fair number of returns, but nobody seems to have tied the bits together.
Curious to know what has happened to Elizabeth..has she completely dropped out of sight?
ReplyDeleteNope lives in guilford or surrounding area. I believe he made a trip to thailand and made a full transition to Beth. I dated a member of his family for several years so got to know peter very well. Beth made very few appearances. By far the smartest man I have ever met.
DeletePeter Young 'Elizabeth', I think he got arrested in the end my mum was friends with his wife and two sons George and Henry but we lost contact with the family in 2001/2002. After the bank scandal his wife had a large house, I think 6 bedrooms in total. We stayed with his wife and sons a few times but she never spoke of her husband
ReplyDeleteI knew Peter as an undergraduate.
ReplyDeleteWe kept in touch sporadically afterwards, but lost touch around the time of the trial.
He was great fun to know, and a good mathematician, although he neglected his studies somewhat.
He was actually married twice, the first marriage to someone he met at university.
I hope he