Federal Court Penalizes Bank for Illegal Wash Sales, Fictitious Sales and Noncompetitive Transactions

The CFTC announced that Judge Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Royal Bank of Canada ("RBC") to pay a penalty for engaging in more than 1,000 illegal wash sales, fictitious sales and noncompetitive transactions involving stock futures contracts over a three-year period.

The Court found that RBC knowingly executed sales of narrow-based stock index futures and single stock futures contracts as block trades through its branches and international trading accounts, trading opposite of two of RBC's offshore subsidiaries and executed on the OneChicago, LLC futures exchange.

See: RBC Consent Order; CFTC Press Release.