A former metals trader at Commerzbank AG (CBK)’s Dresdner Kleinwort unit won a U.K. tribunal ruling preventing the Financial Services Authority from banning or fining him in a market abuse case over lead contracts. A U.K. tribunal limited the FSA to censuring Jason Anthony Geddis over the 2008 trades on the London Metal Exchange, the regulator said in a statement today. Geddis had challenged the FSA’s decision issued last year. “The tribunal felt that a public censure was a more appropriate penalty,” the FSA said in the statement. “The tribunal determined that Mr. Geddis’ conduct in creating a disorderly market fell below the proper standard of care, but it was not a failure of integrity.” The FSA banned 71 people from working in the industry and issued fines of 98.5 million pounds ($159.6 million) in the year that ended March 31, 2011, according to the regulator’s annual report. The regulator alleged Geddis committed market abuse and violated LME trading guidelines by building a position of more than 90 percent of warrants for lead stockpiles, without lending back to the market. Geddis’s lawyer, Michael Segen of Segens Solicitors in London, didn’t immediately return a call for comment. To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in London at elarson4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net

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