IRELAND: Central Bank of Ireland Press Release On the Settlement Reached with Merrion Stockbrokers over MiFiD Regulation Breaches

Thursday March 22 2012

Fund-Axis would like to draw your attention to a recent press release from the Central Bank of Ireland detailing the settlement agreement that they have reached with Merrion Stockbrokers for breaches of MiFiD Legislation.

As part of the Central Bank’s on-going monitoring of the accuracy and completeness of transaction reporting submitted by firms, the Bank identified that the firm failed to report transactions in financial instruments, which were admitted to trading on a regulated market or a MTF operated by a market operator, on three non-consecutive dates between July and November 2010. This check was performed by the Central Bank to establish whether reporting firms have submitted a file with the financial instruments executed in the previous working day for each day within a specific period.

During the course of a transaction reporting review undertaken by the firm, it identified a further 10,708 non-reported transactions which it brought to the Central Bank’s attention.

In May 2011, the Central Bank conducted a themed inspection of the firm in the normal course of supervision. On the basis of information obtained during the inspection, it came to light that 6 trades may have been incorrectly reported as sales instead of purchases. The Central Bank raised this issue with the firm. The firm completed a reconciliation and from that identified that it had been reporting the incorrect buy/sell indicator to the Central Bank on client principal trades since 1 November 2007 in breach of Regulation 112 of the MiFID Regulations.

The breaches were unintended and once detected the firm submitted all transactions reports correctly.

The Central Bank reprimanded the firm and required it to pay a monetary penalty of €65,000.

Full details of the press release as issued by the Central Bank can be found at the following link:

Central Bank Settlement Agreement with Merrion Stockbrokers for Breaches of MiFiD Legislation

Should you wish to contact the author of this article in relation to the matters raised above or any other issue, please don’t hesitate to email info@fund-axis.com