Tag: Reuters

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Article: Prosecutors search Wirecard premises in market manipulation probe

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Prosecutors search Wirecard premises in market manipulation probe

Thomas Escritt, 05 June 2020

BERLIN, June 5 (Reuters) – Prosecutors in Munich said they had searched the premises of financial services company Wirecard and opened proceedings against its management board as part of a market manipulation probe by BaFin, Germany’s financial regulator.

In a statement on Friday, prosecutors said the company was suspected of having issued misleading information which may have impacted Wirecard’s share price between March 12 and April 22.

Wirecard confirmed in a statement that its premises had been searched as part of an investiugation targeting its management board. It said it was cooperating fully with the investigation.

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Article: US charges another former JP Morgan exec with market manipulation

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US charges another former JP Morgan exec with market manipulation

Reuters . New York, 17 November 2019

The Department of Justice has charged another former JPMorgan Chase and Co executive with alleged racketeering and manipulating precious metals prices between 2008 and 2016, the latest in a string of similar prosecutions.

The indictment against Jeffrey Ruffo, who is also charged with other federal crimes including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, is the result of an ‘ongoing investigation’, federal prosecutors said in a statement. Ruffo is the sixth person to be charged with alleged fraud in connection to JPMorgan’s precious metals desk.

The case relates to spoofing, which involves placing bids to buy or offers to sell contracts with the intent to cancel them before execution, allowing spoofers to influence prices. In recent years there has a been a surge in spoofing related prosecutions in the United States by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Ruffo could not immediately be reached for comment.

A JPMorgan spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. The US bank has said in recent regulatory filings that it is cooperating with various investigations relating to its metals trading practices.

According to the indictment, Ruffo worked at JPMorgan from 2008 to 2017 as a salesperson serving hedge funds investing in precious metals and he encouraged JPMorgan traders to place deceptive orders to create price advantages for his clients.

The indictment also alleged that Ruffo and his former colleagues defrauded JPMorgan’s clients who had invested in ‘barrier options’ by pushing option prices to levels that benefited the bank.

An option is a financial instrument that gives buyers the right to buy or sell an underlying asset at an agreed price and at a fixed time. Its value is tied to the value of the asset.

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Article: Factbox: European banks hit by Russian money laundering scandal

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Factbox: European banks hit by Russian money laundering scandal

Reuters Staff, 08 March 2019

Several European banks are facing allegations of being involved in a Baltic money laundering scandal and failing to prevent tainted Russian money from flowing through their branches across the world. Continue reading “Article: Factbox: European banks hit by Russian money laundering scandal”

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Article: CORRECTED-S.Korea fines Goldman Sachs’ unit $6.7 mln for naked short selling

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CORRECTED-S.Korea fines Goldman Sachs’ unit $6.7 mln for naked short selling

Reuters Staff, 18 November 2018

SEOUL, Nov 28 (Reuters) – South Korea’s financial regulator said on Wednesday it has imposed a 7.5 billion won ($6.66 million) fine on Goldman Sachs Group’s subsidiary Goldman Sachs International for violating short-selling rules.

The fine is for its short selling activities without securing underlying assets, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said in a statement, noting the U.S.-based international investment bank’s unit conducted short sales worth 40.1 billion won in May.

Naked short selling, which occurs when an investor sells stock that has not yet been borrowed, is illegal in South Korea. ($1 = 1,126.5500 won)

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Article: A big short growing in Italian debt

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A big short growing in Italian debt

Abhinav Ramnarayan, Saikat Chatterjee, 09 November 2018

LONDON (Reuters) – A surge of interest in Italian bond futures may be a sign of a substantial short position building up in the derivatives market as tensions rise over budget negotiations between Rome and Brussels.

The big short in the futures market reflects a buildup in speculative and hedging activity after a tumultuous summer in the Italian markets and also indicates rising concerns of capital outflows. Continue reading “Article: A big short growing in Italian debt”

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Article: FINRA fines Interactive Brokers $5.5 million for short selling violations

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FINRA fines Interactive Brokers $5.5 million for short selling violations

Reuters Staff, 21 August 2018

(Reuters) – The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has fined a unit of Interactive Brokers Group Inc IBKR.O $5.5 million for violating several naked short selling rules over a period of at least three years.

The unit, Interactive Brokers LLC’s, supervisory system, including its written supervisory procedures, was not reasonably designed to achieve compliance with the federal requirements from July 2012 through June 2015, said FINRA.

FINRA, Wall Street’s self-regulator, also said the company repeatedly ignored “red flags,” including internal audit findings and multiple internal warnings from its staff.

The regulator said Interactive neither admitted nor denied the charges while settling the matter.

Interactive Brokers was not immediately available for comment.

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Article: U.S. CFTC to fine UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC for spoofing, manipulation: sources

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U.S. CFTC to fine UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC for spoofing, manipulation: sources

Reuters, 27 January 2018

The U.S. derivatives regulator is set to announce it has fined European lenders UBS, HSBC and Deutsche Bank millions of dollars each for so-called “spoofing” and manipulation in the U.S. futures market, three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The enforcement action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is the result of a multi-agency investigation that also involves the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – the first of its kind for the CFTC, the people said.

The fines for UBS and Deutsche Bank will be upward of ten million, while the fine for HSBC will be slightly less than that, the people said, without providing exact figures. Continue reading “Article: U.S. CFTC to fine UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC for spoofing, manipulation: sources”

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Article: Bank of Israel under fire over decade-long currency intervention

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Bank of Israel under fire over decade-long currency intervention

Steven Scheer, 08 March 2017

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Bank of Israel has a problem. After spending almost a decade and huge sums trying to curb the shekel, the currency is still rising relentlessly – to the dismay of the country’s exporters.

In 2008 the central bank began what was supposed to be a temporary fix. The plan was to buy large amounts of dollars and halt a rapid rise in the shekel, partly to protect exporters who account for more than 30 percent of economic output and form a strong domestic lobby.

But after purchasing more than $70 billion over the years, the bank is still struggling to soften the exchange rate and prevent Israeli exports from becoming relatively more expensive on world markets. Continue reading “Article: Bank of Israel under fire over decade-long currency intervention”

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Article: Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

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Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income

Jennifer Ablan, 05 July 2016

Short seller Marc Cohodes, who has famously bet against the shares of six Canadian-based companies including Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc and Home Capital Group Inc, said on Wednesday that he is targeting yet another Canadian firm – Exchange Income Corp.

Cohodes told Reuters that Exchange Income – a Winnipeg-based company focused on opportunities in aerospace and aviation services and equipment, and manufacturing – does not generate enough cash to pay the juicy dividend it provides investors. At about C$33 per share, Exchange Income commands a market capitalization of $1 billion.

Cohodes, who worked at a short-selling hedge fund but now raises chickens in California and invests his own money, has targeted Valeant, Intertain Group Ltd, Concordia International Corp, Home Capital, Equitable Group Inc and Badger Daylighting Ltd. Cohodes told Reuters last month that he is keeping his short position on the Canadian lender Home Capital despite a capital infusion from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc .

Continue reading “Article: Short seller Cohodes targets yet another Canadian firm: Exchange Income”

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Article: Goldman Sachs to pay $15 million to settle SEC stock lending case

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Goldman Sachs to pay $15 million to settle SEC stock lending case

Suzanne Barlyn, 15 January 2016

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs & Co GS.N will pay $15 million to settle civil charges that its securities lending practices violated federal regulations, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

Goldman made improper representations to customers who requested that the firm locate certain stocks for short selling, the SEC said. Goldman told those customers that it had arranged to borrow, or believed it could borrow, the security to settle the short sale, a process known as “granting locates.”
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Article: Common currency: a forex scandal that epitomises the blindness in the banking crisis

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Common currency: a forex scandal that epitomises the blindness in the banking crisis

Andre Spicer, 16 November 2014

The biggest open secret in the financial world has been confirmed. Regulators in the UK, the US and Switzerland have announced massive fines for some of the world’s largest banks for a manipulation of global currency markets that in its callous ubiquity says so much about the banking behaviours that sparked the global financial crisis.

Fines levied by the UK regulator add up to £1.1 billion. The US regulator announced fines of $1.4 billion. Banks hit by these fines include UBS, Citi, JP Morgan, HSBC and RBS. Barclays is yet to come to a settlement on the back of the investigations.

The probe uncovered individuals traders within large banks who were working together in trading clubs which had names you would expect from the “ruthless narcissists” on BBC TV show, The Apprentice. These included “the players”, “the 3 musketeers” and “1 team, 1 dream”.

These clubs worked together to influence the WM Reuters 4pm fix – essentially the official number used to fix currency rates. It shapes everything from how much we pay for currency when we go overseas to how much our pension fund pays when it wants to buy into an offshore investment. This is one of the core numbers in global finance.

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Article: Florida state professors settle naked short-selling case

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Florida state professors settle naked short-selling case

Sarah N. Lynch, 01 February 2014

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Florida State University professors who specialize in financial markets and physics will pay more than $670,000 to settle civil charges that they carried out an illegal short-selling scheme using an elaborate options strategy, U.S. regulators said on Friday.

Gonul Colak and Milen Kostov settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting or denying the charges. Continue reading “Article: Florida state professors settle naked short-selling case”

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Article: Indictment Won’t Stop Steve Cohen from Hosting a Hamptons Tuna Party

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Indictment Won’t Stop Steve Cohen from Hosting a Hamptons Tuna Party

Nitasha Tiku, 29 July 2013

Try as they might, the feds haven’t been able to slow Steve Cohen’s roll.

Force his $14 billion hedge fund, SAC Capital, pay a $616 million settlement for insider trading accusations? He goes out and buys a Picasso and a second Hamptons manse down the road from his first one. Serve SAC Capital a five-count criminal indictment for insider trading? He throws a flashy party at his 9,000 square foot estate on Further Road. Continue reading “Article: Indictment Won’t Stop Steve Cohen from Hosting a Hamptons Tuna Party”

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Article: SEC fines optionsXpress, individuals $4.8 million for naked short sales

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SEC fines optionsXpress, individuals $4.8 million for naked short sales

Reuters Staff, 10 June 2013

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Securities and Exchange Commission judge has ordered optionsXpress, its former chief financial officer and a customer to pay a total of $4.8 million in fines and to return $4.2 million for illegally selling shares they did not hold.

The order was posted late Friday on the SEC’s website.

A lawyer for Charles Schwab Corp, which bought optionsXpress in 2011 after the alleged violations occurred, said that optionsXpress “respectfully disagrees” with the ruling and is considering an appeal.

“There was no naked short selling in this case,” Stephen Senderowitz, a lawyer representing optionsXpress, said in an email to Reuters.

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Article: SEC charges OptionsXpress over naked short selling

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SEC charges OptionsXpress over naked short selling

Reuters Staff, 16 April 2012

April 16 (Reuters) – The online brokerage OptionsXpress and five individuals were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with involvement in an abusive naked short-selling scheme.

The SEC on Monday said the scheme involved a series of sham transactions, violating a regulation requiring that equity securities be delivered when due.

Four OptionsXpress officers and a customer were charged by the SEC. Three of the officials settled without admitting or denying the regulator’s findings.

The SEC said the misconduct lasted from at least October 2008 to March 2010. Charles Schwab Corp bought OptionsXpress last year.

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