Britain Fines Former Banco Espírito Santo Unit

LONDON — British regulators have fined the former investment banking business of the troubled Portuguese lender Banco Espírito Santo for failing to disclose the departure of central staff members from one of its capital markets teams in 2013.

The move is the first time that the Financial Conduct Authority of Britain has used its relatively new powers to fine so-called financial sponsors that act as advisers on initial public offerings and other stock listings.

Execution Noble & Company, the London arm of Banco Espírito Santo de Investimento, was fined 231,000 pounds, or about $352,000, the regulator said. The company has been suspended from acting as a financial sponsor by the regulator since December 2013.

“It is vital that the regulator, issuers and investors have confidence in sponsors, and we rely on them having an open and cooperative relationship with us,” Georgina Philippou, the regulator’s acting director of enforcement and market oversight, said in a news release.

By agreeing to settle at an early stage of the investigation, Execution Noble qualified for a 30 percent reduction in its fine, which could have been as high as £330,000.

In a notice, the regulator said that Execution Noble failed to notify the United Kingdom Listing Authority that two-thirds of the 15-person financial sponsors team had left from June to November 2013.

The listing authority found out about the departures only after inquiring about a news report in November 2013, the regulator said.

It added that Execution Noble had properly notified the regulator’s authorizations department that the individuals had left, but had failed to separately notify its listing arm as required.

The fine comes less than a month after Haitong Securities of China agreed to acquire Banco Espírito Santo de Investimento for 379 million euros, or about $453 million.

Portuguese regulators were forced to engineer a rescue of Banco Espírito Santo in August after the bank was undone by its exposure to its struggling corporate parent, Espírito Santo International.

Espírito Santo International and several entities that are part of a complex web of companies controlled by the Espírito Santo family have since filed for bankruptcy.

Banco Espírito Santo, once one of Portugal’s largest financial institutions, was shut down, and its healthy businesses were transferred to a new lender, Novo Banco.

The collapse of Banco Espírito Santo was one of the first tests of new rules in Europe for how to handle bank failures. The new rules are intended to minimize the cost to taxpayers while preventing disruption to the financial system.

The Portuguese government lent about €4.4 billion of the €4.9 billion cost of the bailout to the country’s bank resolution fund, which is bankrolled by financial institutions. Novo Banco and other healthy businesses, including the investment banking arm, will be sold in the hope of recovering the taxpayer loan.