What’s the best response to an inconvenient, impractical rule? For Wall Street brokerages, one answer is simply to flout it. Eleven of the biggest names in finance just paid $1.8 billion to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over employees’ unapproved use of platforms like WhatsApp. It manages to be both trivial and disturbing.
for “participating” in its probe, though it could toughen up its punishments if they don’t stick to the terms it has imposed.
The regulators at least didn’t say they’d uncovered anything illegal, though disappearing-message apps and encryption make evidence easy to hide. But it’s still troubling to find widespread, frequent examples of bank employees, many with “global firm-wide leadership” roles, routinely doing something their companies forbid. It's not the wrongdoing itself – it’s the shrug-emoji-like message it sends.Regulators fined 11 financial institutions $1.
The probe by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission involved divisions of Bank of America, Barclays, Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, Nomura and UBS. Communications reviewed by regulators showed that employees discussed matters including deals, clients, meetings and market conditions, despite company policies prohibiting the use of personal email or chat services for business purposes.
At several of the firms, the SEC noted that the supervisors responsible for implementing the relevant policies were themselves using personal devices and apps to discuss their work.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com