Two Broker-Dealers to Pay $4.65 Million in Penalties for Providing Deficient Blue Sheet Data

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc. has agreed to pay $2.7 million and BMO Capital Markets Corp. has agreed to pay $1.95 million to settle charges for providing incomplete and inaccurate securities trading information to the SEC. Broker-dealers are required to provide the information known as "blue sheet data," which the SEC uses to carry out its enforcement and regulatory obligations, including investigations of insider trading and other fraudulent activity. According to the SEC's orders, over a period of several years, Stifel and BMO each made numerous deficient blue sheet submissions containing missing or inaccurate data, largely due to undetected coding errors. The SEC found that Stifel failed to report data for approximately 9.8 million transactions and provided inaccurate information for approximately 1.4 million transactions.