(Adds more detail)
By Huw Jones
LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Britain's financial regulator on
Monday fined currency options broker TFS-ICAP 3.44 million
pounds ($4.6 million) for routinely reporting fake trades to
customers for over seven years.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that between 2008
and 2015, brokers at the firm were telling customers that a
trade had occurred at a particular price or quantity, when no
such trade had actually taken place, a practice known as
"printing".
"Brokers saw printing as being part of the role and one that
'everyone was doing'," the FCA said.
"It took place openly on desks, with the motivation of
generating business for the firm."
Printing trades could generate additional revenue and in
turn boost pay of brokers, the regulator said.
TFS-ICAP was not able to comment immediately.
The fine, following an investigation that also involved
regulators from the United States, would have been five million
pounds had TFS-ICAP not agreed to resolve the case, the FCA
said.
"The FCA is grateful for the assistance provided by the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the United States in
this investigation," the watchdog said in a statement.
Since 2018, a senior manager and desk head have left
TFS-ICAP, and the composition of its board has changed, the FCA
said.
An independent monitor appointed in 2018 has reported no
instances of printing.
"This market should take notice that printing, or providing
information to clients where the basis for the information is
not true, is not in keeping with appropriate standards of market
conduct," said Mark Steward, the FCA's executive director of
enforcement and market oversight.
($1 = 0.7484 pounds)
(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Tom Arnold and Jason Neely)