Quattrone, 48, was also ordered to serve two years’ probation and to pay a fine of $90,000 (£50,000) as Judge Richard Owen imposed a near-maximum sentence.

The former star banker at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) was ordered to surrender within 50 days.

Outside the court Quattrone, who is appealing against his conviction, maintained his innocence. “I can hold my head high because I know I’m innocent and I know I never intended to obstruct justice. It’s now time to turn our focus to the appeal. I’m confident at the end of this process I’m going to be vindicated.”

The former Wall Street high-flyer originally faced between 10 and 16 months in jail.But prosecutors successfully argued that he had perjured himself, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 21 months. Judge Owen said it was “crystal clear” that Quattrone had been “untruthful” during the trial.

Quattrone begged for mercy before he was sentenced: “I humbly ask that you show mercy and compassion for me and my family.”

His legal team pleaded for leniency on the grounds that the banker’s wife Denise was unwell and that his daughter Christina was suffering emotional difficulties.

The judge denied the appeals, saying that Mrs Quattrone and her daughter would be well provided for, with $50 million in assets, and a $6 million trust fund for Christina, at the family’s disposal.

In May, after a first trial had collapsed with a hung jury, Quattrone was found to have obstructed investigations by the SEC and a Grand Jury into whether he gave shares in technology companies to clients in exchange for lucrative investment banking business.

The case hinged on an e-mail that Quattrone sent to his staff during the investigation, urging them to “clean up those files”. Quattrone said that the message was merely a reminder that staff should keep their desks tidy. Prosecutors argued that he had been instructing his colleagues to destroy evidence of his arrangement with clients.

The sentence handed to Quattrone is the heaviest given to a financial figure since Michael Milken, the so-called “junk bond king”, was ordered in 1990 to serve ten years in prison.

Quattrone will serve his sentence at a minimum-security jail in California, where the rate of pay for prison work would be 12 cents to 40 cents an hour. At most he could make $305 a year — a far cry from the $120 million that he earned at CSFB in 2000.

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