LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The U.K. Financial Services Authority said Tuesday that it has banned Alexis Stenfors, a former proprietary trader with Bank of America's /quotes/comstock/13*!bac/quotes/nls/bac (BAC 14.04, +0.01, +0.07%) Merrill Lynch International Bank arm, for deliberately mis-marking positions he traded on behalf of the firm. The FSA said Stenfors, who was a senior trader on the short-term interest rate trading desk, mis-marked his positions by around $100 million in early 2009 in order to avoid showing increasing losses in his books. His actions caused the division to make a negative adjustment of $456 million to its books, the regulator said. It added that, given Stenfors' cooperation, it is "minded" to revoke the ban in five years. Merrill Lynch International Bank was fined 2.75 million euros last October by Irish regulators for failures linked to Stenfors' mis-marking.
