Watchdog slaps £1.6m fine on SocGen
THE Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulator fined French bank Societe Generale £1.575m yesterday for failing to provide accurate transaction reports.
The fine handed out to SocGen, which in 2008 lost around €5bn (£4.1bn) in a trading scandal, follows previous penalties handed out to Barclays, Credit Suisse and Commerzbank for similar failings.
The FSA said that between November 2007 and February 2010, SocGen had either failed to report, or inaccurately reported, 18.8m of its 23.5m reportable transactions.
It added that the SocGen breaches occurred despite the FSA sending out repeated reminders to companies of their obligations to provide accurate data, and of the importance of complying with FSA rules concerning the reporting of transactions.
“SocGen failed to accurately report a very high proportion of its transactions for a significant length of time,” Margaret Cole, FSA director of enforcement and financial crime, said.
“This failure is a serious breach of our rules as it can have a damaging impact on our ability to detect and investigate suspected market abuse,” she added.