Trader hinted at turmoil in Facebook posts
When Kweku Adoboli typed a short update on Facebook last Tuesday, he might have been referring to troubles other than a mounting trading loss at UBS.
“Need a miracle,” he wrote.
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But the idea that it may have meant the 31-year-old knew he was in trouble provoked pity and shock among friends and acquaintances on Thursday, after he was arrested in connection with a $2bn fraud at the bank where he was a trader.
“There is a lot of shock, horror and disbelief,” said a former colleague. “He was incredibly straight and upstanding with very high integrity. He would definitely not be the first place you start looking.”
Friends, colleagues, even a former landlord, had little but praise for Mr Adoboli following his arrest. The native Ghanaian appears to have built up a wide circle of friends and acquaintances during his nearly 20 years in the UK, where he first came as a teenager to boarding school in West Yorkshire.
“He was very generous and welcoming, sociable and friendly,” said one acquaintance who met him on his 30th birthday last year.
The landlord at an old flat in Shoreditch, east London, told reporters, “He was a very nice guy, very polite. He would speak to anyone. I don’t have a bad word to say about him.”
Mr Adoboli, whose father worked in a senior position at the UN, according to friends, arrived in the UK after a childhood in Ghana and stints living elsewhere, including Israel.
After attending Ackworth School, a coeducational boarding and day school founded by Quakers in 1779, he went on to Nottingham University, graduating in 2003 with a degree in e-commerce and digital business.
Mr Adoboli began working at UBS in London in 2006. The former colleague said he was well-regarded by his fellow staff.
Outside work, he appears to have embraced cultural life in the city’s East End, calling himself a fan on Facebook of The Boundary complex of restaurants and bars in the Shoreditch neighbourhood. His interests range from photography to television drama series The Wire, according to his profile on the social media website. His girlfriend, who declined to comment on Thursday, is a doctor.
He celebrated his 30th birthday last year with a big party at his Shoreditch flat. “His flat was very, very impressive,” said one guest. “It was a bit of a bling flat to be honest. He came across as someone who worked quite hard to get where he was and played quite hard too.”
He was also an occasional contributor to Just Giving fundraising campaigns, joking with two marathon runners that he would take back donations if they did not finish the race.
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