Biggest SEC Whistleblower Award to Date A whistleblower somewhere recently got a check or two for nearly $279 million from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the SEC, which adds that it is the “largest-ever award” to date. The whistleblower’s “information and assistance led to the successful enforcement of SEC and related actions,” according… Read More >>
Mizuho Capital Markets Settles CFTC Case for $6.8M
Mizuho Capital Markets (MCM) will pay more than $6.8 million to settle allegations brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that the swap dealer mishandled key foreign exchange (FX) forward transactions and put its clients at a disadvantage, officials say. The CFTC order settles charges against the New York-based bank holding company and will… Read More >>
Firms Can Consolidate Ops Silos: Q&A
(In early March, financial information provider SIX announced that its global pricing, market, and reference data can be delivered to investment accounting platform FundGuard’s investment book of record (IBOR), accounting book of record (ABOR), and net asset value (NAV) solutions. The partnership means that FundGuard has access to SIX’s end-of-day market prices, core security master… Read More >>
Barclays Capital Fined $2.5M via LOPR Reporting Case
Barclays Capital Inc., a member of FINRA, the broker-dealer industry’s self-regulatory authority since 2007, has agreed to a censure and a $2.5 million fine for allegedly failing to report, or inaccurately reporting, over-the-counter (OTC) options positions to the Large Options Positions Reporting (LOPR) system. That alleged reporting hiccup happened approximately 4.3 million times from January… Read More >>
Will Europe Move to T+1?
The move to a shorter settlement cycle for European equities has many more moving parts than the transition in the U.S. and Canada, which are moving fast from the current trading day plus two (T+2) settlement cycle to the shorter, one-day, T+1 time frame for equity markets. In addition, Europe does yet face pressure from… Read More >>
Time to Rethink A.I.?
You don’t need artificial intelligence (A.I.) to predict what the economy is up to, or the perils of global climate change, or even what the local weather will be like next weekend. But that does appear to be where we are headed. Don’t just take it from FTF News. Ask Jamie Dimon, the chief executive… Read More >>
Derivatives Firms Take Ransomware More Seriously: Q&A
(Editor’s note: In late January, ION Cleared Derivatives, part of the ION Group, reported “a cybersecurity event,” which was a ransomware attack that set off a crisis for the global processing of cleared derivative instruments. The attack got the attention of the CFTC and the Futures Industry Association (FIA) as company officials worked to resolve… Read More >>
SWIFT Optimistic After Applying Blockchain to Corporate Actions
Six major financial services firms and the SWIFT financial messaging cooperative report that late last month they pilot-tested a blockchain-based solution that streamlines the communication of “significant corporate events to investors” by getting rid of multiple data problems. In an announcement and a report, SWIFT provided details about this latest collaborative experiment with six securities… Read More >>
Pershing X to Use Snowflake’s Data Cloud & Other News
Pershing X is Expanding Its Services The Pershing X technology provider and business unit of BNY Mellon reports that it hopes to bring new analytics and data management to clients via a collaboration with Snowflake, a data cloud provider. Pershing X is “expanding its stand-alone data service offerings to wealth management firms” via the Snowflake… Read More >>
UBS Completes Repo Trade via Blockchain & Other News
Banks Use Broadridge DLR Platform UBS and an unnamed Asian bank have “executed the first cross-border intraday repo transaction on Broadridge’s blockchain-enabled Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform,” according to operations, systems, and services provider Broadridge Financial Solutions. The intraday trade “marks the launch of the next phase in the rollout of Broadridge’s DLR platform …… Read More >>