ALBANY, N.Y. — Credit Suisse has agreed to pay $10 million to settle charges by the New York State Attorney General's Office of fraudulent electronic trading practices.
According to the Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Credit Suisse treated orders not subject to public reporting of aggregate execution quality less favorably than orders that were subject to reporting. Credit Suisse did not disclose its practice to its Retail Execution Services (RES) customers and misrepresented the liquidity customer access to when sending RES orders, the Attorney General's Office said.
“Credit Suisse gamed its publicly reported statistics and misled customers – and now they’re being held to account,” New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement. “Wall Street firms cannot offer misleading assurances about the execution quality they provide their customers while engaging in electronic trading strategies that undermine those promises.”
The investigation of Credit Suisse led by Underwood's office included reviewing the company's source code, trading data, server logs and a computer search of Credit Sussie's RES customer coded orders, according to the Attorney General's Office.