FINRA Fines Credit Suisse Securities for SHO Violations

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently announced that it has fined Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC $1.75 million for violating Regulation SHO (Reg SHO) and failing to properly supervise short sales of securities and marking of sale orders. As a result of these violations, Credit Suisse entered millions of short sale orders without reasonable grounds to believe that the securities could be borrowed and delivered and mismarked thousands of sales orders.

In a short sale, the seller sells a security it does not own. When it is time to deliver the security, the short seller either purchases or borrows the security in order to make the delivery. Reg SHO requires a broker or dealer to have reasonable grounds to believe that the security could be borrowed and available for delivery before accepting or effecting a short sale order. Requiring firms to obtain and document this “locate” information before the short sale is entered reduces the number of potential failures to deliver in equity securities. In addition, Reg SHO requires a broker or dealer to mark sales of equity securities as long or short.

FINRA found that from June 2006 through December 2010, Credit Suisse’s Reg SHO supervisory system regarding locates and the marking of sale orders was flawed and resulted in a systemic supervisory failure that contributed to significant Reg SHO failures across its equities trading business. During the time period, Credit Suisse released millions of short sale orders to the market without locates, including threshold and hard to borrow securities. The locate violations extended to numerous trading systems, aggregation units and strategies. In addition, Credit Suisse mismarked tens of thousands of sale orders in its trading systems. The mismarked orders included short sales that were mismarked as “long,” resulting in additional violations of Reg SHO’s locate requirement.

As a result of its supervisory failures, many of Credit Suisse’s violations were not detected or corrected by the firm until after FINRA’s investigation caused Credit Suisse to conduct a substantive review of its systems and monitoring procedures for Reg SHO compliance. FINRA found that Credit Suisse’s supervisory framework over its equities trading business was not reasonably designed to achieve compliance with the requirements of Reg SHO and other securities laws, rules and regulations throughout the period at least June 2006 through at least December 2010.

In concluding this settlement, Credit Suisse neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA’s findings.

This information, which is publicly available on FINRA’s website, is being provided by The White Law Group. The White Law Group, LLC is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, investor protection, and securities regulation/compliance law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Boca Raton, Florida. To speak with a securities attorney, please call 312-238-9650.

For more information on The White Law Group, please visit the firm’s website at http://whitesecuritieslaw.com.