A Citigroup business unit operating an alternative trading system (ATS) has been charged with failing to protect the confidential trading data of its subscribers.
New York-based LavaFlow Inc. has agreed to pay $5 million to settle the SEC’s charges, including a $2.85 million penalty that is the agency’s largest to date against an ATS.
An ATS is a venue that executes stock trades on behalf of broker-dealers and other traders. LavaFlow operates a type of ATS known as an electronic communications network (ECN), which unlike a dark pool displays some information about pending orders in its system, such as best bid or best offer. Under federal rules, an ATS must have safeguards to protect the confidential trading information of its subscribers.
According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding, LavaFlow allowed an affiliate operating a technology application known as a smart order router to access and use confidential information related to the non-displayed orders of LavaFlow’s ECN’s subscribers. The order router was located outside of the ECN’s operations and LavaFlow did not have adequate safeguards and procedures to protect the confidential information that the order router accessed. While LavaFlow only allowed the affiliate to use the confidential trading data for order router customers who also were ECN subscribers, the firm did not obtain consent from its subscribers to use their confidential information in this way, nor did LavaFlow disclose the use in its regulatory filings with the SEC.
