16 Wall Street firms fined $1.1 billion for discussing deals on personal apps

[Hydrogen]

• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday fined 16 financial firms, including Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS, a combined $1.1 billion over failing to maintain and preserve electronic communications.
• The sweeping industry probe, which was first reported by Reuters last year and had since been disclosed by multiple lenders, is a landmark case for the agency, regulatory experts said.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday fined 16 financial firms, including Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS, a combined $1.1 billion over failing to maintain and preserve electronic communications.

The sweeping industry probe, which was first reported by Reuters last year and had since been disclosed by multiple lenders, is a landmark case for the agency, regulatory experts said.

“The firms admitted the facts...acknowledged that their conduct violated recordkeeping provisions of the federal securities laws... and have begun implementing improvements to their compliance policies and procedures to settle these matters,” the SEC said.

From January 2018 through September 2021, the banks’ employees routinely communicated about business matters using applications such as text messages and WhatsApp on their personal devices, while the institutions did not preserve the majority of these communications, in violation of the rules, the SEC found.

That likely impeded the SEC’s ability to gather evidence in other, unrelated investigations, the agency said.

The failings occurred across all 16 firms and involved employees at multiple levels of authority, including supervisors and senior executives, the SEC said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/27/us-fines-16-wall-street-firms-1point1-billion-over-record-keeping-failures.html

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$1.1 billion is a relatively large fine for wall street firms to shoulder.

It seems the SEC wants to pursue criminal cases against certain parties. But lacks data to do so as a result of the conversations being made on personal apps, which do not record conversations. This somewhat mirrors much of the gamestop case. Where it was claimed employees were not monitored closely enough.

In this case however the allegations are against supervisors and senior executives. Possibly even CEOs, CTOs, etc. This case targets the top of the food chain.

The SEC is being extremely active in 2022. They've constantly been in the news over the last few months. A stark contrast to them being mentioned only once every year the winklevoss twins petitioned for a crypto based ETF.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

$1.1 billion is a relatively large fine for wall street firms to shoulder.

Eh, my grasp of violations and fines involving banks, brokerages, and other Wall Street institutions isn't great but I'd be willing to bet that if a company like JP Morgan got hit with a $1.1 bln fine, they'd take the hit on their balance sheet for the year, their stock price might drop a couple of points, but in the end they'd move on.

In this case, that $1.1 bln fine is spread out over 16 companies, most of which are huge Wall Street players.  Needless to say there's not much pain that's going to be felt by those companies.

I'm really glad the SEC has their eyes on those firms mentioned, because I always had the impression that they were all in bed together and a dipshit violation involving the use of social media platforms to discuss company business would never be noticed, much less prosecuted.  Then again, it could be that the US government is so hard up for money that the SEC got orders from on high to sniff out whatever wrongdoing they could and levy some juicy penalty revenue.  Sort of like a municipal government sending cops to ticket as many speeders as they can find.