Merrill Lynch Admits to Misleading Customers about Trading Venues

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith with misleading customers about how it handled their orders. Merrill Lynch agreed to settle the charges, admit wrongdoing, and pay a $42 million penalty. According to the SEC’s order, Merrill Lynch falsely informed customers that it had executed millions of orders internally when it actually had routed them for execution at other broker-dealers, including proprietary trading firms and wholesale market makers. Merrill Lynch called this practice “masking.” Masking entailed reprogramming Merrill Lynch’s systems to falsely report execution venues, altering records and reports, and providing misleading responses to customer inquiries.