Citigroup broker-dealer fined $15M for inadequate U.K. trade monitoring

Citigroup’s international broker-dealer was fined 12.6 million pounds (U.S. $14.9 million) by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for failing to implement an adequate trade surveillance program required by British law.

The FCA announced Friday that Citigroup Global Markets, a London-based subsidiary of Citigroup, failed to “properly implement the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) trade surveillance requirements relating to the detection of market abuse,” which include insider trading and market manipulation.

Citigroup Global Markets failed to comply with the regulation when it took effect in 2016, and the FCA said the broker-dealer took 18 months to “identify and assess the specific market abuse risks its business may have been exposed to and which it needed to detect.”