UBS AG was ordered to face a whistle-blower lawsuit by a former commercial mortgage-backed securities strategist who said he was fired for telling supervisors he was being pressured to publish misleading reports, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman rejected the Swiss bank’s request for dismissal of the case, saying in a decision filed on Tuesday that the former strategist, Trevor Murray, met requirements for proceeding under federal law. Murray, who was responsible for research and reports about CMBS products distributed to UBS clients, said he was pressured to skew his published research in ways designed to support UBS Securities’ CMBS trading and loan origination activities. Murray sued under whistle-blower protections in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. He accused UBS of illegally firing him partly because of disclosures protected by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley investor-protection law.
