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Regulatory Sanctions

Merrill Settles FINRA Systemic Reporting, Books & Records Charges

October 18, 2016

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith agreed to pay $2.8 million to settle FINRA charges the firm had for years inaccurately reported millions of trades to a FINRA Trade Reporting Facility. 

 

FINRA found that a system configuration error caused Merrill Lynch to, among other things, inaccurately report millions of trades to OATS in which purchases were reported as principal sales and agency crosses. Further violative actions:

 

  • Merrill Lynch reported millions of trades it was not required to report.
  • Over a 5-year period, Merrill encountered a number of separate system errors that caused it to report millions of inaccurate reportable order events to OATS, including inaccurate timestamps, broker-dealer orders reported as customer orders and a failure to report millions of execution reports.
  • For about 3 years, Merrill failed to record certain special handling instructions, as well as the correct receipt and route timestamps on order tickets, which caused millions of records to be inaccurate.