But Firms Want Real-Time Corporate Actions Data A new report based on survey results reveals that slightly more than “three-quarters of respondents (78 percent) still process part of their corporate actions manually, with 40 percent processing more than half of their corporate actions in this way,” according to research sponsored by data and infrastructure services… Read More >>
$1B in Misused 1MDB Funds Returned to Malaysia
Justice Department Sends Back Misappropriated Funds U.S. Justice Department officials report that they have returned “an additional $452 million in misappropriated 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) funds to the people of Malaysia, bringing the total returned to over $1.2 billion.” The repatriation of the funds from the former 1MDB investment development fund follows a scandal in… Read More >>
Merrill Lynch Pays $11M+ to Settle UIT Case
FINRA, the self-regulatory authority for broker-dealers, has fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. $3.25 million for “failing to reasonably supervise” early unit investment trust rollovers. In addition to the fine, the firm will be paying $8.4 million in restitution to “harmed” customers. In the usual formulation, Merrill Lynch neither confirms nor denies the… Read More >>
Crypto Undermines SEC’s Mission: Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Sen. Warren Urges SEC to Consider Crypto Regs Wall Street critic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, via a recent letter, to investigate the ways that cryptocurrency exchanges “may be undermining the SEC’s mission” as a regulator of securities trading markets. The letter from Warren, who is… Read More >>
FNZ Can Have GBST’s Post-Trade Wares: CMA
The FNZ-GBST acquisition saga may be entering its final act as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the U.K. has reaffirmed its initial findings that their continued merger would reduce competition in the retail investment platform solutions space. This time around, though, the CMA has suggested that FNZ, a wealth management technology and investment… Read More >>
Firm Fined for Alleged Regulation SHO Violations
FINRA, the financial industry’s self-regulatory authority, has charged Wolverine Execution Services with “inaccurately marking sell orders as long rather than short in 18,756 instances.” The firm, based in Chicago, also failed to “document compliance with the locate requirement in 556,388 instances during February 2018,” according to FINRA. Wolverine Execution Services, a subsidiary of Wolverine Trading,… Read More >>
Capitolis Taps State Street for Key Post
Capitolis Hires James Reilly A software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor, Capitolis has hired industry veteran James Reilly from State Street and appointed him as its new head of equity and total return swaps (TRS) funding solutions, officials say. Reilly has two decades of capital markets and financial technology experience. The Capitolis networking software helps firms find liquidity… Read More >>
Score Priority Settles AML Case with FINRA
Broker-dealer Score Priority has settled with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which charged the New York City-based firm with anti-money laundering (AML) violations. According to FINRA, the firm, which changed its name from Just2Trade, Inc. in January 2020, “failed to develop and implement an anti-money laundering (AML) program reasonably designed to achieve and monitor the… Read More >>
SteelEye to Expand into North American Markets
SteelEye Raised $17 Million to Fund Growth SteelEye, a compliance technology and data analytics vendor based in the United Kingdom, reports that it plans to expand into North America. Founded in 2017, SteelEye offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) based regulatory-technology platform for “banks, brokers, and asset managers” that is meant to simplify their compliance processes, officials say. In… Read More >>
Will Blockchain Deliver on Its Promises in 2021?
I think our lead fintech news brief about Instinet and Credit Suisse completing multiple equities transactions in T+0 via blockchain/distributed ledger technology [https://bit.ly/2OwJJWJ] may have more significance than at first glance. These two major players used the Paxos Settlement Service from Paxos Trust Company, a self-described infrastructure provide, to settle U.S.-listed equities trades on a… Read More >>
