The UK's financial watchdog has handed Magnus Peterson an industry ban following a string of fraud offences.

The Financial Conduct Authority has banned Magnus Michael Peterson, the former Weavering hedge fund boss, from performing any function related to any regulated activity.

In January this year, Peterson was convicted of a range of fraud offences through his Cayman Islands-registered Weavering Macro Fixed Income Fund resulting in around $536 million in losses to clients. 

The offences, which were committed between 31 July 2003 and 31 March 2009, consisted of eight counts of fraud, forgery, false accounting and fraudulent trading. In January, Peterson was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court.

The Macro Fund, which was marketed as a low risk and liquid fund, had no real assets to repay investors when they started asking for their money back in 2008 following the financial crisis. Between 2005 and 2009, Peterson rewarded himself “handsomely” from investors' monies, to the value of £5.8 million ($8.9 million), the Serious Fraud Office said. Click here to read a recent analysis by Compliance Matters, a sister news service to this one, on the Weavering fraud case.

“Mr Peterson defrauded investors who should have been able to trust him. Over a prolonged period he purposely used investors’ money to prop up his business, and then lied in order to cover up his deception,” said the FCA's director of enforcement and market oversight, Mark Steward.

“To protect consumers and markets we have banned Mr Peterson from working in financial services.”