by Howard Haykin

GREAT POINT CAPITAL (a Chicago, Il-based FINRA member since 2001) agreed to pay a $20K fine … to settle FINRA charges that, among other things, it inaccurately or untimely submitted Reportable Order Events (“ROEs”) to the Order Audit Trail System (“OATS”). Of the rejected ROEs that the firm did repair, some were not repaired within the required time period and some of the late resubmissions were reported with inaccurate, rejected ROE IDs.  [FINRA Case #2016051933501]

COWEN AND COMPANY (a New York, NY-based FINRA member since 1978) agreed to pay a $175K fine … to settle FINRA that it transmitted reports to OATS that contained inaccurate, incomplete, or improperly formatted data. The settlement also requires the firm to revise its supervisory system and WSPs. According to FINRA, the ROEs contained inaccurate Firm Order Identifications (“FOIDs”) resulting from 2 issues: (i) the firm’s misunderstanding of its FOID reporting obligation; and, (ii) the misreporting of a certain type of order that was unique to a recently acquired broker-dealer.  [FINRA Case #2016049867901]

MCDONALD PARTNERS (a Cleveland, OH-based FINRA member since 2005) agreed to pay a $22.5K fine … to settle FINRA charges that it failed to report certain municipal securities transactions to the MSRB Real-Time Transaction Reporting system (“RTRS”). Among other things, the firm failed to report both the purchases into its riskless principal account and the sales to its investment adviser clients of certain riskless principal transactions.  [FINRA Case #2017052419301]

STONECREST CAPITAL MARKETS, fka Redwine & Company (an Austin, TX-based FINRA member since 1996) agreed to pay a $15K fine … to settle FINRA charges that, among other things, it failed to report transactions in Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (“TRACE”)-eligible fixed income securities.  [FINRA Case #2016048194301]

These cases were reported in FINRA Disciplinary Actions for May 2019. Click above Case # links for further details.