Du was jailed in 2009 for seven years on 10 counts of insider trading in the shares of CITIC Resources Holdings Ltd (1205.HK) while he was part of the Morgan Stanley team advising the company on a proposed deal to buy oil field assets in China.

In a ruling handed down on Thursday, three Hong Kong judges rejected Du's appeal to have his convictions overturned, but they reduced his sentence. He will now have to serve six years in prison, and pay fines of HK$1.688 million ($217,700), reduced from HK$23.3 million

Du's sentence was the longest jail term handed out for insider trading since it became a criminal offence in Hong Kong in 2003. ($1 = 7.7533 Hong Kong dollars)

(Reporting by Rachel Armstrong in SINGAPORE; Editing by Ken Wills)

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