FINRA Censures Goldman, Fines Firm for Trade Reporting Violations

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority censured and fined Goldman, Sachs & Co. $17,500 for municipal securities trade reporting violations, the self-regulator revealed yesterday in the latest monthly report of disciplinary actions.

A spokeswoman for Goldman declined to comment. The firm neither admitted nor denied the charges but agreed to the sanctions.

FINRA said that between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2007, Goldman failed to report the identifier for the "contra party" - a term for the other dealer in a trade - for 27,965 inter-dealer trades reported through the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Real-Time Transaction Reporting System.

The reporting failures violated the board's Rule G-14, which generally requires that most trades be reported within 15 minutes of occurrence.

The contra side must monitor the submissions to ensure that data representing its side of the trade is accurate and must correct the trade data if it is not.

Currently, inter-dealer trades that do not include the dealer identifiers nevertheless clear through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp, the the central clearinghouse for muni trades. That is because DTCC only requires a participant ID number that it provides to dealers. But trades without the identifiers will not clear beginning in June, when a new procedure goes into effect requiring dealer identifiers to be included on both sides of a trade.

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