An amateur trader accidentally made £9,000,000 when it turned out a dummy account he thought he was using was actually real.
Harouna Traore is now suing broker Valbury Capital after the company refused to pay him the money saying he breached trading limits.
Traore, from France, opened what he thought was a practice account, which allows traders to place deals without losing any money, with the firm last summer so he could practice trading at home.
But he only realised he was handling real money after placing bets on £880 million of futures, running up a loss of around £880,000.
He carried on buying and eventually built up a £3.8 billion position in US equity futures, turning it into a profit of £8.8 million.
He told the Financial Times: I could only think of my family. I was stressed.
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But Valbury refused to pay the married father-of-two over breach of contract – so the 41-year-old is now suing the company for the money he says they owe.
Valbury says it shouldnt pay and denies all wrongdoing, and is expected to argue Traore is a financial services professional and that he said he traded futures and options regularly in his application to open an account.
But Traores lawyers say the company position is wrong and that the company failed to impose any trading limits, adding he had no prior experience of financial markets.
The newspaper says the £9 million is euivalent to the profit Valbury made last year.
Robert Falkner, partner at Valburys lawyers Reed Smith, said: We are familiar with the spurious allegations made by the French arcade trader Mr Traoré (a seasoned market risk analyst formerly employed by Reuters) which are strongly denied as wholly without merit and will be vigorously contested.
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