Morgan Stanley was today at the centre of a third trading probe in two weeks after a former senior trader at the US bank was fined and banned by the UK Financial Services Authority for illegally frontrunning his client's positions. He had gone undetected for four months.

Nilesh Shroff, who joined Morgan Stanley in 2006, was fined by the UK financial regulator £140,000 (€159,255) and banned for two years due to incidents related to "pre-hedging" programme trades over four months from June to October 2007.