The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has fined UBS AG 27.6 million pounds sterling for transaction reporting infringements under MiFID I. The penalty notice can be found here. The fine relates to issues with 135.8 million transaction reports between November 2007 and May 2017. These can be divided into:
- Missing reports
- Incorrect reports
- Reports that were out of scope (which is prohibited under MiFID)
In 2015, Merrill Lynch were fined £13.5 million for reporting failings under MiFID (see here). They were also fined £34.5 million in 2017 for EMIR reporting failures (see here).
While many in energy and commodities are not under the MiFID II successor legislation, most are within EMIR. This fine will therefore give a message to the market of increased vigilance on the part of regulators.
And there SFTR expected to come in to force in 2020, which would include Securities Lending and Borrowing for commodities – which doesn’t seem to be on anybodies radar in the sector at the moment,