Credit Suisse in SEC Pact Over 'Blue Sheet' Submissions

By Tess Stynes 

The U.S. arm of Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $4.25 million and admitted that it provided deficient customer stock-trading data--commonly referred to as "blue sheet data"--over a two-year period in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, based in New York, also agreed to be censured and to cease and desist future violations of the books and records provisions of U.S. securities laws.

The SEC said Credit Suisse admitted that it made at least 593 deficient blue sheet submissions to the SEC from January 2012 to January 2014, omitting more than 553,400 reportable trades representing 1.3 billion shares. According to the SEC, Credit Suisse identified technological and human errors that led to the deficient reports and since has implemented several changes in response, including measures to prevent, detect, and correct blue sheet data errors.

A Credit Suisse spokeswoman declined to comment further.

According to the SEC order, the blue-sheet data deficiencies at Credit Suisse were found in connection with a related investigation, in which SEC staff compared the blue sheet submissions from certain broker-dealers to equity cleared data from the National Securities Clearing Corp.

The term "blue sheet" stems from the color of the forms originally mailed to broker-dealers to complete and return to the SEC, though such reports shifted to an electronic format in the 1980s.

Write to Tess Stynes at [e-mail]

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 28, 2015 16:06 ET (20:06 GMT)

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