(Bloomberg) — Citadel Securities broke rules for labeling short sales and may have incorrectly marked millions of trade orders over a five-year span, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
(Bloomberg) — Citadel Securities broke rules for labeling short sales and may have incorrectly marked millions of trade orders over a five-year span, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The firm, which didn’t admit to or deny the allegations, agreed to pay a $7 million penalty. The SEC said that the lapses resulted from a coding error in the firm’s automated system, and that Citadel Securities provided inaccurate data to the regulator over the period.
Ken Griffin’s Miami-based firm is one of the top market makers in the US equity market. According to the SEC, Citadel Securities inaccurately indicated that certain short sales as longs, and vice versa. The mis-marks, however, were brief and often resolved within minutes, the regulator said.
In a statement, Citadel Securities said that the issue had no impact on executing trades for clients. “While updating our systems to accommodate certain client requests, we made a coding change that inadvertently affected a de minimis percentage of our order markings. We detected the issue and promptly fixed it more than three years ago,” the firm said.
(Updates with information on case in third paragraph.)
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