The UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) has banned a London-based hedge fund manager and fined him £140,000 for deceiving investors by mismarking funds he managed and misleading the FSA during the investigation.

Simon Treacher was portfolio manager on the BlueBay Emerging Market Total Return Fund - a fund that has now been wound down. From August to October 2008, he cut and pasted different figures onto seven original broker quotes used in the valuation process of assets in the funds he managed. The deliberately altered quotes led to an uplift in the independent valuation of the funds of approximately US$27m over three months.

This resulted in investors being financially disadvantaged by approximately US$650,000, for which BlueBay has fully compensated them. Treacher then provided misleading information to the FSA about his conduct during its investigation.

Treacher is no longer employed at BlueBay and the FSA says it makes no criticism of BlueBay in connection with this investigation.

Treacher agreed to settle at an early stage of the FSA's investigation and qualified for a 30% reduction in the financial penalty. Were it not for this discount, the FSA would have sought to impose on him a financial penalty of £200,000.