The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined UBS £27.59m for failings in relation to 135.8 million transaction reports between November 2007 and May 2017.

The Swiss investment bank failed to ensure it provided complete and accurate information in relation to around 86.67 million reportable transactions, and it also incorrectly reported 49.1 million transactions to the FCA over a period of nine years and six months.

Furthermore, the regulator found that the bank failed to take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively in respect of its transaction reporting.

These failings related to aspects of UBS’s change management processes, its maintenance of the reference data used in its reporting and how it tested whether all the transactions it reported to the FCA were accurate and complete.

Commenting, FCA executive director of enforcement and market oversight Mark Steward said: “Firms must have proper systems and controls to identify what transactions they have carried out, on what markets, at what price, in what quantity and with whom. If firms cannot report their transactions accurately, fundamental risks arise, including the risk that market abuse may be hidden.”

As UBS agreed to resolve the case, it qualified for a 30 per cent discount in the overall penalty. Excluding the discount, the FCA would have imposed a financial penalty of £39.43m.

The authority has fined 12 other banks for transaction reporting failures, including Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

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