Regulatory Violations

October 13, 2015

UBS AG will pay $19.5 million to settle charges that it made false or misleading statements and omissions in offering materials provided to U.S. investors in structured notes linked to a proprietary exchange trading strategy.  This is the first case by the SEC involving misstatements and omissions by an issuer of structured notes, a complex financial product that typically consists of a debt security with a derivative tied to the performance of other securities, commodities, currencies, or proprietary indices.  The return on the structured note is linked to the performance of the derivative over the life of the note.  UBS, one of the largest issuers of structured notes in the world, settled the SEC’s charges that it misled U.S. investors in structured notes tied to the V10 Currency Index with Volatility Cap by falsely stating that the investment relied on a “transparent” and “systematic” currency trading strategy using “market prices” to calculate financial instruments underlying the index, when, in fact, undisclosed hedging trades by UBS reduced the index price by about 5%.  SEC

October 7, 2015

Three private equity fund advisers within The Blackstone Group will pay nearly $39 million to settle charges they failed to fully inform investors about benefits that the advisers obtained from accelerated monitoring fees and discounts on legal fees.  An SEC investigation found  that advisers Blackstone Management Partners, Blackstone Management Partners III, and Blackstone Management Partners IV, failed to adequately disclose the acceleration of monitoring fees paid by fund-owned portfolio companies prior to the companies’ sale or initial public offering.  These payments essentially reduced the value of the portfolio companies prior to the sale, to the detriment of the funds and their investors.  Additionally, the fund investors were not informed about a separate fee arrangement that provided Blackstone with a much greater discount on services by an outside law firm than the discount the law firm provided to the funds.  SEC

September 30, 2015

Latour Trading LLC, a high-frequency proprietary trading firm, will pay more than $8 million to settle charges that Latour violated the SEC’s Market Access Rule and Regulation National Market System over a four-year period in which Latour sent millions of non-compliant orders to U.S. exchanges.  SEC

September 29, 2015

UBS Financial Services Inc. of Puerto Rico (UBSPR) will pay $15 million to settle charges of failing to supervise a former broker who had customers invest in UBSPR affiliated mutual finds using money borrowed from a UBSPR affiliated bank.  The SEC alleged that UBSPR and the bank prohibited using such loans to purchase securities and the practice exposed investors to losses while producing profits for the former UBSPR broker.  SEC

September 28, 2015

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC will pay a $4.25 million penalty to settle charges by the SEC that over a two-year period, it made at least 593 deficient “blue sheet” submissions to the SEC, omitting more than 553,400 reportable trades representing 1.3 billion shares.  Broker-dealers like Credit Suisse are required to provide the SEC with information about trades by its customers, commonly referred to as “blue sheet data,” which the agency can use to identify and analyze trades in the course of investigations and other work.  As part of the settlement, Credit Suisse also has admitted it violated the recordkeeping and reporting provisions of the federal securities laws.  SEC

September 22, 2015

R.T. Jones Capital Equities Management, a St. Louis-based investment adviser, will pay a $75,000 penalty to settle charges that it failed to establish required cybersecurity policies and procedures reasonably designed to protect customer records and information, in advance of a breach that compromised the personally identifiable information of approximately 100,000 individuals, including thousands of the firm’s clients.  SEC

September 21, 2015

Investment advisor Eagle Investment Management and its affiliated distributor FEF Distributors will pay $40 million to settle SEC charges of improperly using mutual fund assets to pay for the marketing and distribution of fund shares.  This settles the first case brought by the SEC under its “Distribution-in-Guise” Initiative which protects mutual fund shareholders.  The money will be returned to the accounts of affected shareholders.  SEC

September 2, 2015

Investment advisory firm Taberna Capital Management will pay $21 million to settle charges that it fraudulently retained fees belonging to collateralized debt obligation (CDO) clients.  An SEC investigation found that Taberna did not inform CDO clients that it was retaining payments known as “exchange fees” obtained in connection with restructuring transactions.  Retention of the exchange fees was not permitted by the CDO’s governing documents or disclosed to investors in the CDOs. SEC

August 25, 2015

The SEC obtained court authorization to freeze the assets of Mr. Lobsang Fargey, a Bellevue, Washington man accused of defrauding Chinese investors seeking U.S. residency through the EB-5 program.  The SEC alleged that Dargey and his “Path America” companies raised at least $125 million for two Washington-based real estate projects, but Dargey diverted $14 million for unrelated real estate projects and $3 million for personal use.  The court’s order also restrains Dargey from soliciting additional investors and requires him to repatriate funds transferred to overseas bank accounts.  SEC

August 19, 2015

Citigroup Global Markets will pay a $15 million penalty to settle SEC charges that it failed to enforce policies to prevent transactions that involved misuse of material, nonpublic information.  Broker-dealer employees routinely have access to material nonpublic information.  Therefore, federal securities laws require firms to take reasonable steps to prevent misuse of such information.  An SEC investigation found that between 2002 and 2012, Citigroup’s monitoring for such abuse was inadequate because it failed to review thousands of trades executed by its trading desks.  Additionally, the SEC found that Citigroup inadvertently routed more than 467,000 transactions on behalf of advisory clients to an affiliated market maker which executed the transactions as principal at or near prevailing market prices.  SEC