Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith has agreed to pay a fine of $825,000 as a part of a settlement with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
From at least February 2017 through the present, external investment managers, financial advisers, and customers entered equity orders into the firm’s electronic order systems. The firm performed validation checks on the orders before ultimately routing the orders to a market center for further handling and/or execution.
One such system, for example, is the Equity Order System (EOS). EOS allows external investment managers to transmit files that can contain up to thousands of orders at a time.
After the order files are accepted into the EOS system, Merrill performs validation checks to verify the integrity of the order files and individual orders, such as whether all fields…
Read More
