Sept 16 (Reuters) - Hong Kong's Securities and Futures

Commission said on Tuesday it has imposed a five-year ban on

former Citigroup head of pan-Asia equities, Richard Charles

Heyes, after he was found liable for regulatory breaches during

his tenure more than five years ago.

The SFC in 2022 had imposed sanctions against Citigroup

Global Markets Asia (CGMAL) for sending misleading messages to

clients about trades, weak oversight, and misrepresenting the

nature of trades.

CGMAL was also fined HK$348.3 million ($44.76 million) for

the breaches, which occurred between 2008 and 2018.

The regulator held Heyes responsible for those breaches and

is prohibiting him from re-entering the financial industry till

September 2030, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

"By exerting significant pressure on the trading desks to

grow CGMAL's market share while failing to be vigilant for

telltale signs that his subordinates were achieving this by

dishonest means, Heyes neglected and failed to properly

discharge his managerial responsibility," said Christopher

Wilson, the SFC's executive director of enforcement.

Furthermore, the SFC found that Heyes ought to have learnt

from emails addressed or forwarded to him by his subordinates

that traders were misrepresenting facilitation trades as agency

trades to clients in order to gain additional market share, it

said.

As a result, the failure "enabled a culture of chasing

revenue at the expense of client interests and basic standards

of honesty to take root within CGMAL," Wilson said.

Citigroup declined to comment on the news, but said it has

"implemented significant remedial measures to strengthen our

compliance and internal controls to address this legacy issue

from 2019," in an emailed response to Reuters.

($1 = 7.7813 Hong Kong dollars)