The SEC has taken legal action to freeze a flagship fund of cryptocurrency fund manager Virgil Capital LLC via the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, alleging that the firm’s investors are at risk via fraud and related matters. The focus of the asset freeze request is the firm’s cryptocurrency trading… Read More >>
Executive Shuffles at SEC & CFTC
SEC & CFTC Await New Chairpersons The Trump administration has named an acting chairman for the SEC — Elad L. Roisman, an SEC commissioner — as the now-former Chairman Walter Joseph “Jay” Clayton III stepped down at the end of December, six months before his slated exit in June 2021. Clayton, a Trump team appointee,… Read More >>
CAT Reporting Teaches Sell Side New Lessons
Despite the pandemic, sell-side firms in 2020 met a very challenging first-round of compliance with the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) trade data surveillance regulatory initiative, learning firsthand that gathering, cleansing, and reporting interfirm transaction data to regulators is much easier said than done. Yet firms are applying lessons learned and more to the CAT deadlines… Read More >>
Robinhood Financial Pays $65M to Settle SEC Case
Robinhood Financial LLC, a Silicon Valley brokerage company founded by two Stanford University grads, Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, will pay $65 million to settle charges that it misled its investors by making “material misrepresentations and omissions,” according to a cease-and-desist order from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Robinhood Financial “provides online and… Read More >>
BlueCrest & SEC Resolve Charges of Investor Harm
BlueCrest Capital Management has settled charges via the SEC that it failed its investors by assigning its best human traders to a proprietary hedge fund while its external investors were serviced by an allegedly mediocre algorithm. The U.S. regulator reports that the hedge fund “has agreed to pay $170 million to settle charges arising from… Read More >>
ICE Unit Settles Charges of Failed Pricing Compliance
A securities pricing subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has settled with the SEC over charges that it should have done a better job of vetting certain prices that were based on data from single broker market participants. The wholly-owned subsidiary, ICE Data Pricing and Reference Data (PRD), which is also a registered investment adviser,… Read More >>
Clayton to Step Down as SEC Chairman
SEC Chairman Walter Joseph “Jay” Clayton III confirmed earlier this week that he will be stepping down from his post by the end of December instead of June 2021, paving the way for President-Elect Joe Biden to appoint a successor in time for the start of the new administration. When he steps down, Clayton, a… Read More >>
Goldman Sachs Admits Guilt in Foreign Bribery Case
Goldman Sachs is admitting guilt and paying a fine of $2.9 billion for its role in a scandal that saw officials from the firm bribing Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials from 2009 to 2014 in order to secure ongoing business for the multinational investment bank. After much negotiation, the firm has begun to resolve the… Read More >>
Private Equity Firm to Buy AxiomSL
AxiomSL to Expand Offerings via Takeover A cloud-based risk management and regulatory solutions vendor AxiomSL has agreed to be taken over by Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm specializing in the software and technology-enabled services sectors, so that it can grow its customer base and expand its offerings. AxiomSL serves banks, investment management firms, broker-dealers,… Read More >>
Spoofing Cases Yield a Record Fine & Convictions
False trade orders that spur sharp market price reactions before they disappear — otherwise known as “spoof orders” — have the full attention of authorities as evidenced by a recent record fine against JPMorgan, and the conviction of two former traders at Deutsche Bank. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay nearly one billion… Read More >>
