Wall Street giant J.P. Morgan was ordered to pay US$200 million to resolve charges that it failed for years to properly oversee certain derivatives trading activity.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) settled allegations against J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, which admitted that its trade surveillance systems failed to operate correctly between 2014 and 2021 on various trading venues, resulting in billions of orders going unmonitored.
“The surveillance gaps resulted from J.P. Morgan’s failure to configure certain data feeds to ensure complete trade and order data were being ingested by J.P. Morgan’s surveillance tools,” the CFTC said in a release.
The firm, which discovered the failings in 2021 and self-reported them, had fixed the surveillance gaps by 2023, the CFTC noted.
In addition to the monetary penalty, the firm was ordered to cease and desist from further violations, and to comply with certain undertakings.
“Today’s resolution includes a significant penalty, certain factual admissions, and the appointment of a consultant to ensure remediation,” said Ian McGinley, director of enforcement with the CFTC, in a release.
“We hope it sends a clear message that CFTC registrants must take appropriate steps to ensure, through testing and other means, that complete trade and order data direct from exchanges are being ingested into trade surveillance systems and that orders are being surveilled,” he said.
The monetary penalty imposed by the CFTC will be offset by US$100-million worth of sanctions paid in previous settlements with U.S. banking regulators — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board — regarding surveillance gaps.