By David Sheppard

LONDON (Reuters) - PVM Oil Futures Limited said on Friday that Steve Perkins, a senior broker based at the firm's London office, was responsible for unauthorized trades earlier this week which landed the firm with a loss of nearly $10 million.

The London-based brokerage said Perkins had taken the unauthorized positions in Brent crude futures early on Tuesday morning.

The heavy buying of Brent futures in Asian trade on Tuesday caused global crude prices to spike to their highest level this year, in a move traders and analysts had previously struggled to explain.

Brent crude oil hit a high of $73.50 a barrel early on Tuesday before reversing. Brent was just above $66 a barrel on Friday.

PVM said in a statement on Thursday that when it discovered the trades, it closed them out "in an orderly fashion" resulting in losses approaching $10 million.

PVM said its brokers were not authorized to take positions in the crude oil markets. Oil brokers generally help to match trading counter-parties rather than dealing outright themselves.

PVM declined to discuss Perkin's possible motivation for the unauthorized trades.

On Thursday, PVM said it was conducting a full investigation and it had informed the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulatory body, and the InterContinental Exchange (ICE) <ICE.N> where the majority of Brent crude oil futures trade.

In May, the FSA banned a former Morgan Stanley <MS.N> trader who built up a hefty unauthorized oil futures position following a long liquid lunch, before hiding the deals overnight.

(Reporting by David Sheppard; additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London and Yaw Yan Chong in Singapore; editing by William Hardy)