$80 Million to be Paid by Credit Suisse to Settle Dark Pool Allegations: Bloomberg


09/14/2015



Credit Suisse Group AG will have to shell out more than $80 million in order to settle allegations about it not disclosing how it operated its dark pool private share trading exchange to clients, reports Bloomberg citing a person familiar with the matter.

The news agency reported that the more than $50 million in fines and disgorgement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and about $30 million to the New York Attorney General will have to be paid by the Swiss bank.

While there were no comments from representatives of SEC and Credit Suisse, officials at the New York Attorney General's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Bloomberg report.

The anonymous trading venues and do not display pretrade information are called dark pools which helps anonymous traders and institutional investors to trade anonymously large blocks of shares without the market moving against them.

Bloomberg reported that allegations on whether the Crossfinder platform of Credit Suisse provided an improper advantage to high-frequency traders, among other allegations. Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder platform is the largest alternative trading system in the United States.

In a similar allegation in June 2014, a lawsuit was filed against Barclays PLc by the New York attorney general accusing the British bank of misleading clients in its dark pool. The case is still being fought in the court.

In another case, $20.3 million was paid by brokerage firm Investment Technology Group Inc last month to to settle SEC charges that it ran a secret trading desk that profited from confidential customer information in its dark pool. In another allegation related to dark pool, UBS Group agreed to pay $14.4 million to settle SEC charges in January of this year.

Bloomberg reported that to settle claims that the Zurich-based bank misrepresented certain aspects of how it managed its platform an accord is expected by early October between the two parties.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been investigating for 18 months into allegations of whether U.S. stock exchanges and Wall Street dark pools provide improper advantages to high-frequency traders and the allegations against Credit Suisse are a part of this investigation. This would also be the first settlement for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The inquiry was initiated after the hue and cry by Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys,” which alleged that dark pool firms were gaining an unfair edge by using high-speed computers that run hundreds of trades in the blink of an eye. The SEC and the Department of Justice had also joined the investigations subsequently.  

While only a handful of dark pool operators have settled with the SEC since Chairman Mary Jo White announced new plans for greater oversight of stock-trading in a June 2014 speech, the law enforcers and regulators have struggled to bring cases given the industry’s complicated and opaque nature.
 
(Sources:www.bloomberg.com  & www.reuters.com)