FCA Fines Sigma Broking Over £500,000 Following Market Abuse Reporting Failures
London-based broker Sigma Broking Limited has been fined £531,000 for failing to accurately report on 56,000 CFD transactions between December 2014 and August 2016, the FCA has reported.
The regulator has claimed that, as a result of these reporting failures, Sigma Broking failed to identify and report 97 suspicious transactions and/or orders which may have constituted manipulative or abusive trading.
A number of sanctions have been levelled at Sigma’s board of directors. Former Chief Executive and Director Simon Tyson and former Director Stephen Tomlin have both been issued prohibitions by the FCA, preventing the pair from holding significant management functions in firms regulated by the FCA.
These prohibitions were accompanied by fines of £67,900 and £69,600 respectively. Current director Matthew Kent was also fined £83,000.
Insufficient Monitoring
Speaking on these fines, Mark Steward, Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, stated:
‘Firms must accurately report their transactions and bring any suspicious activity to our attention. Sigma failed to do this, which left potential market abuse undetected. Those failures came from the top and two directors have been banned from holding senior positions in financial services, as a result.
Accurate transaction reporting and effective surveillance are crucial tools in identifying dodgy dealing that undermines clean markets. These bans and the scale of the fines we have imposed demonstrate our determination to ensure firms – and those who lead them – meet the reporting standards we expect.’
