Citigroup Global Markets fined total of GBP62M by FCA, PRA

The FCA has fined Citigroup Global Markets Limited GBP 27,766,200. Failures in the firm’s systems and controls led to $1.4B of equities being sold in European markets when they should not have been, the FCA said in a statement. The FCA said: “On 2 May 2022, a CGML trader had intended to sell a basket of equities to the value of US$58m. The trader made an inputting error while entering the basket in an order management system. This resulted in a basket to the value of US$444bn being created. CGML controls blocked US$255bn of the basket progressing, but not the remaining US$189bn which was sent to a trading algorithm. The algorithm selected was designed to place portions of this total order to be sold in the market over the rest of the day. In total US$1.4bn of equities were sold across European exchanges, before the trader cancelled the order. This coincided with a material short-term drop in some European indices which lasted a few minutes.” The FCA noted that the Prudential Regulation Authority also imposed a financial penalty of GBP 33,880,000 on CGML following its own investigation into related matters.