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BGC Partners
Brokerage firm BGC Partners (Australia) has paid a penalty of A$110,250 ($79,000) to comply with an infringement notice issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)’s markets disciplinary panel in December.

The panel found that on two occasions on 22 March 2019, BGC Partners transacted pre-negotiated business orders on the ASX 24 market without making the required enquiry through the trading platform’s message facility. 

The panel noted that there had been previous similar compliance failures by BGC Partners.

BGC Partners’ failure to make the required enquiry appeared to be the result of unintentional operator error, which could probably have been avoided if BGC Partners had updated its systems to incorporate enhanced technological safeguards, the panel said.

“The Markets Disciplinary Panel considered that although enhanced technological safeguards may not be required where a compliance system is functioning properly, BGC Partners should have upgraded its compliance processes to include appropriate technological safeguards given its previous compliance failures,” ASIC noted.

As a result, the panel found reasonable grounds to believe that BGC Partners contravened subsection 798H (1) of the Corporations Act 2001 by failing to comply with Rule 3.3.1A(1) of the ASIC Market Integrity Rules (Futures Markets) 2017.

Compliance with the infringement notice is not an admission of guilt or liability, and BGC Partners is not taken to have contravened subsection 798H (1) of the Corporations Act.