The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US has penalised Citigroup for filing an incomplete ‘bluesheet’, due to an error with computer coding.
Market makers, brokers and clearing houses are required to send detailed transaction data via a ‘bluesheet’ to the SEC, for the regulator to determine if any illegal activity has taken place.
Citigroup suffered a technological error in software the firm used between May 1999 and April 2014, which meant the bluesheets submitted during that time were incomplete.
The group failed to include 26,810 securities transactions to more than 2,300 bluesheet requests.
The SEC said Citigroup failed to report the coding error incident or take any steps to produce the omitted data until nine months later.
Robert Cohen, co-chief of the SEC’s enforcement division’s market abuse unit, said broker-dealers “have a core responsibility” to provide accurate data to the SEC.
Cohen added: “Citigroup did not live up to that responsibility for an inexcusably long period of time, and it must pay the largest penalty to date for blue sheet violations.”
A recently published report exploring technology - authored by TABB Group – found inadequate technology could be costing firms up to 50% of revenues.