Note from the Publisher: This news is fintech-related inasmuch as it relates to online forex trading. Anyway, we're somewhat sad to report that the SEC, DOJ and DOL have secured a $382 million fine (between the 3) from State Street Bank and Trust Co for essentially misrepresenting to its custody clients that it provided best available pricing on forex trades. The clients include pension funds and NFPs, amongst other institutional clients, making it NOT a very unflattering piece of PR for the financial giant. Another $147M has been agreed to for private class action lawsuits. That's a PRETTY darned hefty set of fines, totaling $530M. Ironically, our CEO is in the markets and listens to CNBC all day long, and didn't hear a thing about it on the station the day the news broke (on Wednesday, 7/27/16). They're an important advertiser, we guess. Anyway, we've been honored to work with State Street in the past on several initiatives and have found their marketing team to be incredibly professional and fastidious about legal issues pertaining to advertising messaging, so we're frankly stunned that such a venerable institution would engage in this activity on their trading desks, but perhaps we're just being naive. At the end of the day, it's all about P&L.
"The U.S. government finally heard Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos loud and clear.
Markopolos, and his whistle-blower group Associates Against FX Insider Trading, were key players in a $530 million settlement announced Wednesday against State Street Bank and Trust Company for allegedly cheating several government bodies on the pricing of their foreign exchange transactions. Markopolos declined to comment.
In a joint announcement on Wednesday the DOJ, SEC, and DOL said that State Street STT, +9.31% will pay $382.4 million, including $155 million to the Department of Justice, $167.4 million to the SEC and at least $60 million to pension plan clients to settle allegations that it deceived some securities custody clients on when it priced foreign currency exchange transactions. The alleged misconduct took place from 1998 to 2009."
Read Full Article at MarketWatch