The men, Ali Mustafa, Pardip Saini, Paresh Shah, Neten Shah, Bijal Shah and Truptesh Patel, were sentenced following a four and a half month trail which was brought to court following a Financial Services Authority (FSA) investigation that started in 2006.

The six were sentenced to between 18 months and three and half years for their part in an insider trading ring which saw them leak information from the print rooms of investment banks JP Morgan and UBS enabling them to trade on information that was not yet public.

In what was described by the FSA as one of the longest and most complex cases it has ever brought to prosecution, the men leaked confidential and price-sensitive information concerning proposed or forthcoming takeover bids and passed it to colleagues on the outside who traded on it.

The offences related to trading around six companies’ shares, including Biffa Group, Premier Oil, Reuters, Enodis, Vega Group and Thus which brought the ring just shy of £735,000 between 1 May 2006 and 31 May 2008.

The judge said: "The insider dealing in this case was not isolated criminal behaviour. The meticulous and exhaustive FSA inquiry has revealed exactly how your cheating was perpetrated."Tweet