A liquidation trust for IFS Securities, Inc., a bankrupt broker-dealer based in Atlanta, Ga., has won an arbitration award of $57 million against a former IFS trader, Keith A. Wakefield, an alleged fraudster who held the post of managing director and head of fixed income trading at the firm, officials say. A key aspect of… Read More >>
Prime Trading Taps Iress to Cut Data Latency
Proprietary trading firm Prime Trading has implemented solutions from Iress — formerly QuantHouse — to access key data feeds and transaction support services via application programming interface (API) links that boost data quality, cut data latency, and bring down costs, officials say. “Previously, during peak moments of high market volatility, Prime Trading experienced data latency… Read More >>
Northern Trust Grows Digital Consulting Team & Other News
Northern Trust Adds Four to Digital Consulting Group Northern Trust has appointed Benjamin Bobroff to head its new digital solutions consulting group, which is in its asset-servicing business development division. Northern Trust also has made three other senior appointments intended to support the “continued strategic focus and investment in digital innovation,” according to a prepared statement. The three will… Read More >>
Davy Capital Markets Taps Torstone & Other News
Davy Capital Markets to Revamp Post-Trade Ops Dublin-based wealth manager Davy Capital Markets reports that it has become a Torstone Technology customer and will use the Torstone Platform to evolve its post-trade processing operations. “We have built and maintained our own post-trade platform for many years, and this has served us very well, as it… Read More >>
Cooperation Helps Firms Beat Financial Crime: Report
Sometimes financial crime is as local as your neighborhood shyster promising crypto riches to gullible kids or unsophisticated old folks. That can be a tragedy for the people who are conned. Other times, though, financial crime is international, requiring cooperation between nation-states or between private financial organizations and public agencies. And international financial crime can… Read More >>
FCA Fines Citi Brokerage $15M for Surveillance Woes
A U.K. regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has imposed a fine of $14.8 million (£12,553,800) upon Citigroup’s international broker-dealer subsidiary for breaches of the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR), a law that requires firms to monitor orders and trades to detect potential market manipulation. The FCA charged the London-based Citigroup Global Markets Ltd. (CGML) with… Read More >>
DTCC’s ‘Project Ion’ Hits a Milestone & Other News
DLT System Settles 100,000 Transactions Per Day The DTCC’s alternative settlement platform based on blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT), Project Ion, has achieved a new threshold — it’s parallel processing more than 100,000 bilateral equity transactions daily and almost 160,000 transactions on peak days via the DTCC subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company (DTC). “The goal of… Read More >>
CFTC Ends LIBOR for IR Swaps & Other News
CFTC Amends & Ends LIBOR Usage The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a final rule ending the requirement that interest rate swaps reference the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) in order to complete the clearing process — another milestone marking the end of the scandal-ridden LIBOR. The final rule modifies the CFTC’s… Read More >>
Two Ex-JPMorgan Traders Convicted for Market Manipulation
A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois recently found two former precious metals traders at JPMorgan Chase & Co., guilty of fraud, attempted price manipulation, and spoofing via a precious metals futures contracts scheme that occurred over an eight-year period and encompassed “thousands of unlawful trading sequences,” authorities say. The two, now-convicted, ex-traders… Read More >>
Canada Puts Crypto-Trading Platforms on Notice
During this winter of discontent and falling values for the crypto world, many are waiting for the regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere to solidify the rules of the road. Industry participants are looking to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the CFTC, the Fed, U.S. Senators, E.U. agencies, and multinational organizations to coordinate a response or… Read More >>