'Cheating' Trader Gets 'Comeuppance'

38-year-old London-based hedge fund trader Simon Sywak split up from is wife in 2005, and left her to look after their two sons. Sywak later told his wife that he was unable to continue to pay his £2,750 monthly maintenance, as he had given up his job at the firm (he could no longer cope with the pressure). He claimed that he was living with his new partner and her mother, and that he was training to be a bus driver.

But Mrs Sywak wasn't having any of it, and engaged a private detective to check her ex-husband out. And the PI found him - in Singapore working for JPMorgan! Needless to say, with video evidence at hand, Mrs Sywak was able to get a UK court to get her maintenance back (in fact, it was increased), but there were also other repercussions. The whole story was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in June last year, by which time Sywak had left JPMorgan for a job at Westpac. And Westpac terminated his employment 3 days after the article appeared, and just 3 weeks before the firm was due to pay a £636,000 bonus guarantee to him. Sywak is now suing Westpac over the unpaid bonus.

And The Wall Street Journal reports that traders on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange are having a tough time wiling away their time. The dominance of electronic trading has resulted in most of the action taking place on the floor during the first and last hours of trading - leaving bored traders with nothing to do for most of the day. According to the newspaper, they apparently fill the time in with long lunch-breaks, visits to the gym, and trips to the members lounge, where hundreds of DVDs are screened on a TV set. Favourites are said to include 'Rambo', 'Star Wars' and 'Wall Street'.

Congratulations go to Goldman Sachs which this week celebrates 10 years since it IPO'd. The Journal points out that, during that time, the firm's stock price has risen 140% - compared to the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, who have both seen their stock fall 41% over the same period.

Finally, The Times City Diary reports that Citi has scrapped its employee charity matching scheme. The scheme has been binned, however, not to save costs, but primarily due to lack of interest. Apparently, since its inception in 2004, only about 30 staff bothered to tap into it!