Sat, May 18, 2013
A A A
Welcome Guest
Free Trial RSS
New! Family Office and Investor Database with 11,750 contacts
Alternative Market Briefing

BlackRock and JP Morgan pay penalty for fictitious sales in ten year spreads

Friday, March 09, 2012

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) yesterday charged subsidiaries of BlackRock and JP Morgan for executing unlawful pre-arranged trades.

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company NA, a San Francisco-based investment manager owned by BlackRock Inc., a global investment firm with $3.5tln in assets, was charged "for engaging in prearranged trades that were non-competitively executed and fictitious sales in ten year U.S. Treasury Note Futures spreads on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)," the CFTC said.

BlackRock will have to pay a $250,000 civil monetary penalty, after it was found that one of its employees, back in 2010 and on two occasions, traded so that BlackRock ended being on both sides of a ten year spread transaction. He executed his trades with the aim of crossing orders in ten year spreads by entering buy and sell orders with two different futures commission merchants (FCM) at around the same time. Both orders were for the same amount, one of which being "all or none." On one of the occasions, the same employee also took on pre-execution communications with someone at the FCM, so that the FCM would sell to the paired bid from BlackRock.

New York-based futures commission merchant J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & ......................

To view our full article Click here

Banner
Today's Exclusives Today's Other Voices Banner More Exclusives
Previous Opalesque Exclusives                                  
More Other Voices
Previous Other Voices                                               
Access Alternative Market Briefing
  • Top Forwarded
  • Top Tracked
  • Top Searched
  1. Goldman offers hedge funds to the 99%[more]

    From TheStreet.com: Goldman Sachs said Thursday it is bringing the sophisticated trading strategies of Wall Street hedge funds to individual investors with investment portfolio's and retirement accounts as small as $1000. The bank's investment management unit, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, i

  2. Opalesque Exclusive: New research examines quantitative trend following as an equity risk hedge[more]

    Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: New research from Nigol Koulajian founder and CIO, and Paul Czkwianianc, Head of Research at Quest Partners, a New York-based systematic fund, looks at how quantitative trend following could be used

  3. People – Jupiter switches lead manager on alternative UCITS fund, Dr. Dermot F Smurfit appointed as Chairman of the ML Capital Group[more]

    Jupiter switches lead manager on alternative UCITS fund From Citywire.co.uk: Jupiter has named Mike Buhl-Nielsen as lead manager on its Europe-focused long/short equity fund, the asset management company has announced… Full article:

  4. Launches – Blackstone preparing launch of ‘super’ hedge fund, Paulson said to team with insurer for new low-tax merger fund[more]

    Blackstone preparing launch of ‘super’ hedge fund From FT.com: Blackstone is preparing to launch a “super” hedge fund to cherry-pick the best trades from the hundreds of third-party hedge funds it invests with, in an effort to try to recapture the outsize returns the $2tn industry was on

  5. A Cat Bond Fund: Source of uncorrelated returns (independent of financial markets) Strategic inclusion in a portfolio - could lower the portfolio's volatility, dampen its risk profile