Forgive length/extraneous nature . . . but since nefarious...

Forgive length/extraneous nature . . . but since nefarious behaviour of HFT and short trading actors plaguing the ASX and A2m has been of interest lately, thought I'd post this from the Sec & Futures Commission, HK. Announced yesterday. UBS. Shameful. Criminal by design.

https://www.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=19PR111

The SFC’s investigations revealed that:

>between 2008 and 2015, the client advisors (CAs) and client advisors’ assistants (CAAs) in UBS’s Wealth
Management division had overcharged clients when conducting bond and structured note trades by increasing
the spread charged after the execution of trades without clients’ knowledge; and

>between 2008 and 2017, UBS had also charged its clients fees in excess of its standard disclosures or rates

Specifically, following their clients’ requests to buy or sell products, the CAs and CAAs would enter the limit order price of the clients’ trades into UBS’s client order processing system. In circumstances where the actual execution price achieved in the market was better than the limit order price, the CAs and CAAs would increase the spread after executing the trades in order to retain the price improvement for UBS without agreement with, or disclosure to, the clients, and sometimes misreported the execution price or spread to the clients. On some occasions, they would also falsify the account statements issued to financial intermediaries, who were authorized to trade for clients, by misreporting the spread amount
to conceal the overcharges.