Citadel Securities LLC

The Securities and Exchange Commission settled charges against broker-dealer Citadel Securities LLC for violating a provision of Regulation SHO, the regulatory framework designed to address abusive short selling practices, which requires broker-dealers to mark sale orders as long, short, or short exempt. These records are routinely used by regulators in policing prohibited short selling activity. To settle the SEC’s charges, Miami-based Citadel Securities agreed to pay a $7 million penalty.

According to the SEC’s order, for a five-year period, it is estimated that Citadel Securities incorrectly marked millions of orders, inaccurately denoting that certain short sales were long sales and vice versa. The SEC’s order finds that the inaccurate marks resulted from a coding error in Citadel Securities’s automated trading system and that the firm provided the inaccurate data to regulators, including the SEC during this period.

The order charges Citadel Securities with violating Rule 200(g) of Reg SHO. Without admitting or denying the findings, Citadel Securities consented to a cease-and-desist order imposing a censure, a $7 million penalty, and a set of undertakings, including a written certification that the coding error has been remediated and a review of the firm’s computer programming and coding logic involved in processing relevant transactions.

Full details are contained herein.