Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission bans Kuo Che-jung for four and a half years and fines him $1 million for matched trades and secret accounts

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has prohibited Kuo Che-jung, a former responsible officer of Yuanta Securities (Hong Kong) Company Limited, from re-entering the industry for four and a half years and fined him $1 million after finding he conducted matched trades in Hang Seng Index options and operated undisclosed accounts. An SFC investigation found that between 2 July 2020 and 24 November 2020, Kuo, acting as a proprietary trader for Yuanta, executed 25 matched trades in a coordinated pattern between Yuanta’s proprietary trading account and a securities account held in his wife’s name at another brokerage. The trades were executed at prices favourable to his wife’s account but disadvantageous to Yuanta’s account, creating a notional benefit at Yuanta’s expense, and some trades were priced outside prevailing bid-ask spreads, potentially affecting normal price formation. The SFC also found he concealed his beneficial interest in his wife’s account, his ownership of two additional securities accounts at another brokerage, and his personal trading activities in those accounts by repeatedly submitting false declarations to Yuanta, breaching staff dealing policies and preventing monitoring. The ban runs from 19 March 2026 to 18 September 2030. In setting the sanction, the SFC cited concerns about Kuo’s fitness and properness, while also taking account of his cooperation and otherwise clean disciplinary record.