The SEC has been busy lately - and all year. Last week, the regulator announced a $20.3 million settlement to be paid by ITG for establishing a secret trading desk to trade against its clients in its own dark Pool. This is a big deal: ITG's CEO and chief attorney stepped down amidst the scandal and there are news reports that more dark pool settlements from Credit Suisse and Barclays are forthcoming.
So what other settlements has the SEC obtained from bad behaving firms? Traders' takes a look.
BNY Mellon agreed to pay $14.8 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by providing valuable student internships to family members of foreign government officials affiliated with a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund. The SEC found that BNY Mellon did not evaluate or hire the family members through its existing, highly competitive internship programs that have stringent hiring standards and require a minimum grade point average and multiple interviews.
August 2015
Guggenheim Partners Investment Management agreed to settle charges it breached its fiduciary duty by failing to disclose a $50 million loan that one of its senior executives received from an advisory client. The Santa Monica, California-based Guggenheim, a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners, paid $20 million to settle charges for the disclosure failure and other violations, according to an August 2915 announcement.
A trio of former employees of Oppenheimer & Co. settled charges stemming from the unregistered sales of billions of shares of penny stocks on behalf of a client. The actions involve a portion of the conduct announced in January in a settled enforcement action against Oppenheimer in which the broker-dealer admitted wrongdoing and paid $20 million to the SEC and the Treasury Department in July 2015.
OZ Management agreed to pay a $4.25 million penalty to settle charges for providing inaccurate trade data to four prime brokers. The SEC said that these actions caused inaccuracies in the brokers' books and records and in data provided to the SEC in investigations. OZ Management, an investment adviser for numerous Och-Ziff funds, admitted wrongdoing to the regulator in July 2015.
