FINRA Fines Merrill Lynch a Total of $6 Million for Reg SHO Violations and Supervisory Failures

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has censured and fined Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (Merrill Lynch PRO) $3.5 million for violating Regulation SHO, an SEC rule that established a regulatory framework to govern short sales and prevent abusive naked short selling. FINRA also censured and fined its affiliated broker-dealer, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (Merrill Lynch), $2.5 million for failing to establish, maintain and enforce supervisory systems and procedures related to Regulation SHO and other areas.

In addition to curtailing naked short selling, among other things, Regulation SHO also aims to reduce the number of instances in which sellers fail to timely deliver securities. Regulation SHO requires a firm to timely "close out" any fail-to-deliver positions by borrowing or purchasing securities of like kind and quantity. Additionally, Reg SHO permits firms to reasonably allocate fail-to-deliver positions to its broker-dealer clients that caused or contributed to the firm's fail-to-deliver position.

FINRA found that from September 2008 through July 2012, Merrill Lynch PRO did not take any action to close out certain fail-to-deliver positions, and did not have systems and procedures in place to address the close-out requirements of Regulation SHO for the majority of that period. FINRA also found that from September 2008 through March 2011, Merrill Lynch's supervisory systems and procedures were inadequate and improperly permitted the firm to allocate fail-to-deliver positions to the firm's broker-dealer clients based solely on each client's short position without regard to which clients caused or contributed to Merrill Lynch's fail-to-deliver position.

Brad Bennett, FINRA's Executive Vice President and Chief of Enforcement, said, "Firms must ensure that their supervisory systems are designed to address and ensure compliance with Regulation SHO. In these cases, each firm's failure to establish systems and procedures to properly close out its fail-to-deliver positions could have potentially negative market impact, which could harm investors."

FINRA's investigation was conducted by the Departments of Enforcement and Market Regulation.

Investors can obtain more information about, and the disciplinary record of, any FINRA-registered broker or brokerage firm by using FINRA's BrokerCheck. FINRA makes BrokerCheck available at no charge. In 2013, members of the public used this service to conduct 16.5 million reviews of broker or firm records. Investors can access BrokerCheck at www.finra.org/brokercheck or by calling (800) 289-9999. Investors may find copies of this disciplinary action as well as other disciplinary documents in FINRA's Disciplinary Actions Online database.

FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity through effective and efficient regulation and complementary compliance and technology-based services. FINRA touches virtually every aspect of the securities business – from registering and educating all industry participants to examining securities firms, writing rules, enforcing those rules and the federal securities laws, informing and educating the investing public, providing trade reporting and other industry utilities, and administering the largest dispute resolution forum for investors and firms. For more information, please visit www.finra.org.