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ONCE, they strutted the City like emperors. Now three of the notorious 'Flaming Ferraris' are facing professional disgrace.
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Lord Archer's son James and two ex- colleagues are to be expelled from the register of traders after a two-year investigation found them guilty in a shares scandal.
Although they could re-apply for registration, the punishment following the probe by the Securities and Futures Authority is likely to mean an effective lifetime ban from most lucrative City jobs.
The men were part of a team which boasted of being the world's most successful share traders, making more than £100million for their employers, the Credit Suisse First Boston investment bank.
Eton and Oxford- educated Archer earned £173,000 a year at 24. Team bonuses were counted in millions and they indulged themselves with the best food and drink.
Some were famously pictured on a Christmas visit to the Nobu Japanese restaurant in London's Park Lane. Conor Campbell, Adrian Ezra, Archer, Dennis Albert and team leader David Crasanti arrived in a ten-seater stretch limousine. Ezra, Archer and Crasanti are the ones facing expulsion next week if their appeals fail.
It was at another fashionable London venue, the Nam Long Vietnamese restaurant, that they acquired their nicknames because of their fondness for £14-a-time Flaming Ferrari cocktails.
The trio's downfall came in 1999, when they were sacked over dubious dealings in shares of Swedish papermaker Stora. They were accused of forcing movements in the Stockholm shares index which triggered windfall profits of around £400,000 on bets and futures deals they had placed. Archer said his finger had slipped on his computer keyboard and he had sold a million shares when he meant to sell 100,000.
Solicitor Keith Oliver, acting for Ezra, said the 28-year-old Harvard graduate had been cleared of two of the three charges he faced, but was found guilty of misleading compliance officers.
'He respects the SFA's decision but will be re-applying at the earliest opportunity,' he added. Archer is now 26 and has since tried to become an online wine merchant. Crisanti, a 36-year-old Princeton economics graduate, oversaw the American arm of the bank's trading operations.
An SFA spokesman said expulsion from the register is a serious punishment meted out to only a few traders each year.
They could re-apply after a period of rehabilitation, but would first have to find a company prepared to employ them.
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