For the third time, Finra has fined New York-headquartered investment banking and brokerage firm Jefferies LLC for non-compliance regarding the reporting of certain securities transactions, this time with a $55,000 penalty, said an agency filing.
Jefferies failed to update the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) with 4,039 transactions in eligible corporate debt securities in August, September and October of 2018 and June through November of 2019, according to last week’s filing.
Officials at Jefferies could not be reached by press time.
The Finra rules regarding TRACE reporting require that eligible companies involved in securities transactions must report a transaction within 15 minutes of its execution, or the reporting will be considered late, according to the filing.
“The 4,039 total late reports were caused by several different issues at the firm, including delays related to a manual reporting process involving trades with foreign affiliates, operational errors and delays by firm personnel, such as firm employees not timely matching tickets in the firm’s system, and amendments to trade terms outside of the 15-minute reporting time frame,” the filing said.
In the past, Jefferies had been fined for similar noncompliance. In May 2017, the firm was censured and fined $195,000, of which $15,000 was related to violations stemming from the way the firm was handling its TRACE reporting and related supervisory duties from April to September in 2015, according to Finra.
Then in December of the same year, another censure and fine of $37,500 was levied for the same violations taking place from October through December, the filing said.
The firm has 25 branches and more than 2,000 registered representatives in the U.S., the filing said, and nearly $48 billion in assets under management, according to Fitch Ratings.